


Gifts From Polydamna

by orphan_account



Series: Playing House [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Absolute Trash, And gives Steve to Bucky as a pet, Angst and Feels, Catheters, Dom/sub, Domestic, Domestic Discipline, Emotional Manipulation, Extremely Dubious Consent, Face Slapping, Face-Fucking, Fucked Up, HYDRA takes over the world, Hurt Steve Rogers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Medical, Medical Inaccuracies, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Not quite as awful as it sounds, Okay maybe it is as awful as it sounds, Power Imbalance, Protective Bucky Barnes, Public executions, Reading Aloud, Spanking, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:20:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 45,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve didn't know exactly what it was that had brought him here. He just knew that he was in a strange bed, in a strange room, with a familiar face. </p><p>He couldn't move, and everything was pain, but it was okay because Bucky was there to look after him. Bucky took the pain away, and cared for him with gentle hands and quiet words. </p><p>But something wasn't right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my friend, who said to me one evening: 'Have you seen any stories where HYDRA takes over the world and gives Steve to Bucky as a reward, like, as a pet?'
> 
> And I answered, 'No, I don't think I've seen anything like that. Do you want it?'
> 
> And she said, 'Yes, please,' and then everything got away from me and my life became consumed by this story. 
> 
> **Please take heed of both the warnings, and the lack of warnings:**
> 
> Re: Character death, any deaths (of canon characters) that occur in this story have already occurred by the outset. It's not like anyone is going to die halfway through or at the end. It's all implied, and pretty ambiguous who may or may not be alive anyway. Just so as you know.

At first there was nothing, and Steve just had the vague understanding that he was dead. 

He had no surroundings, no body: at least, none he had any awareness of. Sometimes light would filter through into his consciousness, and everything would be red or white, rather than simply total pitch dark nothingness. Here and there, he would blink his eyes open – and, oh, he had eyes, so maybe he _did_ have a body? – and although he couldn't make anything out, he would see blurred shapes, beige and gray, and light, piercing blue. But wherever he was, it was a nowhere place. He could not move, he could not see, not really. He heard things, sometimes. 

_Pat, pat, pat._ And the sound of running water. Some other noises, unidentifiable, vague. 

He wasn't bothered by the fact that he might or might not be dead. It seemed a non-issue. Nothing much seemed to be of any consequence, except occasionally when the haze receded, and there was the pain. 

The pain, the first time he became aware of it, was the thing that made him think he was probably _not_ dead. 

But that maybe it would be nice if he were. 

*

_\--ey pal, shh, don't mo--_

Steve groaned, and tried to sit up. The pain flared out from somewhere to the center of him, and everything – all the vague, blurry shapes that made up this not-place – swam. Something strong pressed to his chest, holding him down. 

'No.' 

The word was clarity, intelligible in its simplicity. _No_. Steve let himself be pushed down, let himself be held in place. He was stretched out on something soft, so soft. All he felt was pain on the top of him, that ached and ached and made him feel nauseous, and softness beneath him. 

He closed his eyes, blocking out the swimming, swirling, sickening, shapes. 

The strong, cold ( _cold, it was cold, he hadn't noticed, but shivers were trembling through his body and it was COLD_ ) thing lifted off his chest, and moved instead to wrap around his wrist. The feeling of it – cool and unforgiving – on his skin reminded Steve that he _had_ hands. He tried to wriggle his fingers, but he couldn't be sure if he managed the task. 

The grip around his wrist tightened, and something prodded his skin somewhere up above it. It stung, maybe. Steve wasn't sure. 

He wasn't sure of much for a little while, and belatedly he noticed that the feeling of something gripping onto his wrist was gone. 

And so was the pain. Oh. Good. The softness beneath him threatened to swallow him, and Steve wondered what would happen if he let it. Would he disappear? He was already made of floating, disparate limbs and sensations. Maybe he could dissolve, letting those sensations drift out, disperse into the everything of the not-place he was in. 

The softness seemed to swallow him whole. 

_–at's right, go to sleep, I'm here with y--_

*

The first thing that Steve really saw with any clarity was the eyes. 

They were familiar. Glassy and blue, blue like icy waters and the crack of sky through chalky clouds. Steve looked into them, and smiled because he was remembering _things_. It had been a while since he had remembered that anything existed outside of this not-place. 

The eyes were searching, flicking in short movements like they were trying to pull something out of Steve's own gaze. But Steve knew there was nothing to find, because his eyes went nowhere. His eyes were just floating things, a part of the floating mass of sensations he had. There was his eyes; he had a throat, somewhere, because sometimes he swallowed; he had a wrist, because it had been touched. He had his thoughts. And he had the pain. 

Not right now, though. The pain was elsewhere now. 

Steve laughed, because he wasn't hurting, and the eyes widened and hardened. Startling, as if they had been caught looking at things they weren't meant to. Steve wanted to tell the eyes that he didn't mind, not to worry, just to stay with him. 

Two sets of eyes staring at each other in the mess of other, formless things. That would be nice. 

But the eyes were already gone, and there was another distant sensation of something going into his arm. 

Slowly, Steve became aware that could feel his blood in his veins – it felt icy and turned his stomach. He wished the softness would come and disperse him again. 

*

_\--teve, you haven't gone and got yourself sick again have you?_

'No, Bucky, I ain't sick, it's something else, I...'

_It's okay, whatever it is, we'll sort it out. I got you._

'What about money?'

_Don't be stupid, don't you go thinking about money. Your job is getting better._

'Buck, I think something really bad must have happened. I think, I think I let something really bad happen.'

_Let? What 're you talkin' about? Let. You're an idiot. If something bad happened, it sure as hell wasn't down to you to stop it._

'No, no, it was, I had to stop it, and I didn't, and now--'

_Hush, you. I don't know what you're on about, but you can't go getting yourself worked up. You'll give yourself an asth--_

*

The second thing Steve saw was the little tube of milky liquid. There was small blue letters all over the clear container, but Steve couldn't focus enough to have them make any sense. The tube was emptying; opaque liquid slipping, oozing out, into Steve's arm. 

Steve wriggled his fingers, and this time, he saw them move. He could feel the milky substance pushing into his blood stream, the sensation almost hard, almost solid. It wormed it's way up into his chest, making him grimace. Once the tube was empty, deft fingers detached it from the little green cap that protruded from the cannula on the crook of Steve's forearm. 

'Ha,' Steve said, a short half chuckle as the sensation of pushing in his bloodstream quickly faded, replaced by the feeling of his body dropping, as if suddenly weightless. 

The blue eyes locked on him, and this time Steve took in the whole face. Dark hair and stubble obscuring familiar features. Slightly parted lips, a curious expression as Steve grinned stupidly at him. 

'Are you in pain?' the familiar/unfamiliar face asked him.

Steve shook his head – too quickly. Everything lurched, and he tried to still the movement, dropping his head forward and feeling his chin bump his shoulder. He was partially upright, propped up on pillows, no longer just reclined flat on the bed. When had that happened?

He laughed as the dizzy feeling faded. Seemingly cautious, the eyes came closer, and Steve felt something dip next to his knees as the weight of the man's body settled on the bed. Steve just smiled. He could feel his lips stretching, dry skin cracking, but nothing hurt – euphoria swam through his body. 

Distantly, he thought there were things he should ask the man, but he couldn't remember what they were. The room was coming into some more clarity as he blinked and looked vaguely around. There was a window on the wall opposite where he lay, blinds drawn but light still filtering through. A sofa beneath it, and a small coffee table. There was an armchair next to his bed, and an intravenous pole on wheels, with a several bags hanging off metal hooks. One was half full of yellowish liquid which Steve registered vaguely was probably his own urine. 

'Bucky,' he started to say, and the man's eyebrows furrowed, discomfort sharpening in his clear eyes. Steve wanted to add something else, something about where they were, maybe something about thanking him for taking away the pain. But instead he just said, 'Uhhh...' and the train of thought trailed off. 

'Go to sleep,' the man said. Steve could feel the dropping, floating feeling started to tug at him now, pulling him away into oblivion, so he just nodded happily and let himself be carried away into darkness again. 

*

When he next opened his eyes, slow and deliberate, the room was dim and he was shivering. The pain had returned, and for a moment Steve had the muddled sensation of someone burying something sharp into his diaphragm, and he almost cried out for them to stop. 

But all that came out was a cracked whimper, his voice catching dry in his throat. 

Movement, out of the corner of his eye. Steve turned his head, even the small motion sending pain spiking through his body. He winced. 'Bucky?' he croaked. 

The man who looked like Bucky was asleep in the armchair next to the bed, slumped down low with his legs splayed out. His head was resting on his metal arm, which was slung over the side of the chair. His other hand was tangled in his own long hair. Lips parted, he breathed in short, shallow, fast breaths, eyebrows tight and eyes flickering fast behind his lids. 

'Buck, I need--' Steve tried again, managed to get his voice slightly louder this time. 

The man's eyes opened, slowly; suddenly terrified. He sat up, hands clenching, back ramrod straight. He looked at Steve, and gradually he relaxed. 

'Oh, I'll...' He trailed off, and stood up, taking a step closer to the bed. Glanced over at the I.V. stand, and Steve followed his gaze. The saline bag was empty, and the man frowned. Turning away, he went through a door in the nearby wall, and Steve saw the white gleam of bathroom tiles before the door closed. For a few moments, there was the sound of cupboards opening and things being moved around, and then the man came back out. God, Steve thought, but he looked so much like Bucky. He couldn't remember what had happened, but something niggling at the back of his brain reminded him that it wasn't, it couldn't be. Not really. 

Carefully, the man replaced the saline bag, and after a few moments, Steve could feel chilling feeling of the solution dripping into his veins. He bit his lip, trying to think through the pain as the man opened up a little medicine packet he was holding, and came over to sit on the bed next to Steve. 

The bed was big, Steve realized. Probably a queen. The sheets were plain and hospital-like though, white and yellowish-gray. They were thin, but pretty warm when piled up on each other like they were, and they were rumpled and smelled of stale sweat. 

The man pulled a little plastic packet out of the box, and tore it open, pulling out a transdermal patch. 'Hold out your arm,' he directed, and Steve did so, anticipating the sweet release from pain. He wanted more of the other one, the one that had made him feel euphoric and then carried him away on a soft cloud of sleep. The man affixed the patch to the skin of his forearm, and carefully checked the intravenous drip, making sure everything was still attached properly. Steve noticed that his catheter bag had been emptied while he had been knocked out, before the man had fallen asleep. 

'Bucky...?' he ventured, and the man looked up and frowned, shaking his head. 

'No,' he said, distantly. 

'… What should I call you?' Steve asked. The painkiller was very fast acting, he realized, already the sharp edges of agony fading away, leaving only a dull, receding ache. 

The man seemed to think. 'They call me the asset,' he answered. 'The soldier. The American.' 

'Those aren't names,' Steve said, but the man just shrugged. 'Bucky, James, c'mon, you-- I would know you anywhere. All my life.' 

The man just shrugged again, and changed the subject. 'How are you feeling? Can you rate your pain, on a scale of zero to ten? Zero is no pain.' 

Steve thought for a moment, knowing his tolerance for pain was much, much higher than the average person. 'Four,' he answered after a moment. 'Down from about eight.' He paused for a moment, licking his dry lips while the man nodded, seeming satisfied. 'Can I have a glass of water?' 

Without answering, the man got up, and Steve sunk back into the pillows under his head as the throbbing ache receded, dissipating from his body. After a moment, he heard a tap running, and then the man was back on the bed, pressing the cool rim of the glass to Steve's lips, hand coming up to cradle the back of his head as he guided the liquid slowly, carefully into his mouth. 

Steve swallowed, sip after slow sip. Finally, when the glass was empty, the man put it down on the bedside table, not moving his hand – flesh, not metal – from it's gentle caress at the nape of Steve's neck. His thumb was rubbing slow circles against the soft strands at Steve's hairline. 'Better?' he asked. Steve murmured an agreement, and the man almost smiled, his lips curling just slightly. 'Good. You can eat something, if you want. Not much, your stomach won't be used to it, but...' 

For some reason, the mention of food triggered something in Steve's awareness. He wasn't hungry, couldn't feel anything but vague nausea in his stomach, but this simply made him wonder how long he had been drifting on a haze of painkillers and semi-consciousness. This was the most clarity he had had in God knows how long, and slowly, questions were surfacing; barely in reach, and difficult to grasp at. 

'I...' he started, blinking heavily as he tried to form his thoughts into something manageable, coherent. 'Bucky, where are we?' 

The man (Bucky? It had to be Bucky. It _was_ Bucky) just kept rubbing those slow circles against his neck and murmured: 'Home.'


	2. Chapter 2

Staring up at the ceiling, Steve concentrated on the sensation of pounding in his ears, trying to keep his thoughts together even as the sensation of vertigo threatened to overtake him. 

Bucky, or whoever the man was, had slipped away into an adjoined room, and Steve could hear him moving around the kitchen. He could hear the clink of metal and ceramic on the counter, he could hear cupboards and a fridge opening and closing. He concentrated on the sounds, trying to bind himself to them, pull his haze away from the dizzy, drifting, light-headed feeling of nausea. 

This place was no home that Steve knew. It was a small apartment, seemingly only the one room, with the little attached kitchen nook and a bathroom. The furniture was bare and devoid of personality, more like a hotel or a hospital than anything. 

Steve felt like he was going to be sick. Why was he here? How much time had passed? When had he been hurt? There were other questions, such as to whether his friends were looking for him, but his thoughts were too muddled and distant to really mull on any of them for very long. 

It was almost like he had no concept of time anymore, but eventually, after an indeterminate amount of it, Bucky returned, carrying a little bed tray with another glass of water, and a couple of bowls. His movements seemed very deliberate, military precise; but also cautious and patient. He propped the tray over Steve's knees, straightening out the bed sheets as he did so, and pulled up the armchair closer to the bed, sitting down. 

Up close, Steve could also see two white pills sitting on the blue plastic of the tray. 

'When,' he started, and paused, grasping after the question scratching at his mind, blinking with the effort. ' _How_ was I injured?' 

Bucky's lips tightened, and me met Steve's eyes. 'Doesn't matter,' he said with finality, and he picked up the tablets from the tray, holding them out to Steve. 'Can you swallow these?' 

His hand trembling, Steve held it open, palm up, and let Bucky give him the tablets. He looked down at them. 'What are they?' 

A sigh, eyes closing, then opening again – boring into Steve's with an oddly earnest intensity. 'I need you to take whatever I give you,' he said, voice quiet, clear. Even through the haze of vertigo and nausea and fogginess, Steve thought that sounded unsettling. 'I'm going to look after you.' 

Steve just looked down at the pills, frowning, and eventually Bucky huffed and reached out to nudge Steve's hand up towards his mouth, and lifted the glass of water with his metal hand. 'It's just something to help you relax,' he encouraged. 

Still, Steve hesitated. 'I don't want to go to sleep,' he said, hearing his own voice in his ears sounding a little bit like a petulant child. 

'You won't,' Bucky murmured, and continued to guide Steve's hand to his mouth. Unsteadily, Steve acquiesced, and dropped the tablets onto his tongue. Bringing the water up to his lips, Bucky helped him swallow them down, and then nodded, smiling a little as if Steve had done well. 

He coughed as the pills went down, against the feeling of something being caught in his throat, eyes prickling. Blinking through the blur, he saw Bucky pick up one of the bowls off the tray, taking the spoon in hand. 

The bowl was one of those generic white plastic-made-to-look-like-ceramic ones they sold at the supermarket. Once Steve stopped clearing his throat, Bucky lifted the spoon up, looking at Steve questioningly. It looked to just be a spoonful of pale, slightly greenish mush. 

'I know you don't feel like eating,' Bucky muttered. He was right. Any appetite that Steve's body might have been entertaining seemed to have been dragged away the moment the transdermal patch went on his skin. But he shuffled up a little on the bed, lifting up his hand to take the spoon anyway. 

Bucky just ignored his attempt to hold it, nudging the utensil instead towards Steve's mouth himself and waiting for him to open his lips. Slightly begrudgingly, Steve did. The mush tasted like banana and the bitter tang of yogurt, along with a milder, nuttier flavor. It took Steve a moment to place it as avocado. As far as foods went, it seemed to be something he would be able to stomach – high in calories to aid his recovery, but easy enough to go down. 

He ate slowly, Bucky giving him long gaps between mouthfuls to settle his stomach and fight back the nausea. Every now and again, Bucky would pick at his own bowl of dinner, something that looked studier and less like baby food than Steve's'; there was verifiable meat and vegetables, at least. 

The pills kicked in more gradually than the other things he had been given so far, but after a while of the slow feeding, Steve did indeed start to feel more relaxed and pliant. When Bucky nudged the spoon towards his mouth again, he let it fall slack and open, and Bucky actually let out a small, breathless laugh as he reached out his other hand to guide Steve's jaw shut around the spoon while he clumsily swallowed down the mouthful. 

'That's enough for now,' he said, setting the bowl down. More than half of it had gone down, and Steve just blinked heavily, looking at the plastic rim of the bowl distantly. Tongue feeling weighted, he smacked it in his mouth against the dry sudden dry feeling on his palate, and it took him a moment to notice that Bucky had picked up the water again and was trying to get him to take some into his mouth. 

Mumbling out a vague apology, Steve parted his lips, and let Bucky tilt the glass. It was cool and oddly delicious, and Steve drank thirstily, forcing the other man to pull the glass away to make sure he went slow. 'Good,' he said, and Steve turned his head towards the voice, looking over Bucky's face with wandering eyes, drinking him in. Christ, but it was so hard to concentrate, he thought, even as Bucky just nodded and palmed his hair behind his ear. 'You're doing good.' 

Steve hummed agreeably, and slumped back onto the cushions, vaguely registering that he no longer cared about why he was here, or where here was, or what had happened to him to incapacitate him this much. He turned his head to watch as Bucky sat back in the armchair with his dinner and ate, looking reasonably comfortable now that Steve was pliant and agreeable. 

Yawning, Steve found his speech slurring slightly as he said: 'You said the pills wouldn't knock me out...' 

Bucky glanced up. 'They just made you a bit drowsy,' he replied, a piece of broccoli speared on the end of his fork, hovering near his mouth. 'It's okay, go to sleep if you want.' 

Head lolling exaggeratedly back on the pillows, Steve whined. 'Been asleep too long,' he moaned, drawing out the last syllable until it fell off his tongue under its own weight. 

'Do you have anywhere to be?' Bucky asked. 

Steve's brows tightened and his nose scrunched up as he tried to think. 'Do I?' 

'No,' answered Bucky as he popped the broccoli in his mouth and started to chew. Steve vaguely thought there was a reason to object to that answer, but for the life of him

he couldn't remember

what it

…

 

*

In his dreams, Steve was thousands of feet in the air, fighting for the life of millions. Bucky was below him, boots planted firm on glass, gun drawn – but it wasn't Bucky, it was the Soldier. His eyes flashed with the glint of knives. 

Steve didn't want to fight him, but the most important thing was stopping--

Even in the dream, the feeling of the bullet tearing through the muscle in his leg was blinding. But it wasn't until the third bullet, right below his ribcage, that Steve dropped to the ground, hard metal under his knees. 

He gasped in breaths – they came like breathing in water, stinging at the sinuses and making his eyes water. Distantly, he was aware of a countdown. There were only a handful of seconds left, the woman's voice growing more and more alarmed in his earpiece. The chip was clutched in his hand, and with effort, Steve forced himself to his feet, turning towards the control panel. 

Another bullet tore through his back, barely missing his spine. Steve cried out, and fell forward, fumbling to fit the chip into its place, trying to _fix_ this – 

But they were out of time. 

*

'I'm going to move you to the chair,' Bucky said, standing beside the mattress and looking down at Steve with a lip-biting frown. 'I need to change the sheets.' 

Steve blinked up at him, still groggily fighting back the curtain of sleep. 'You shot me...' he tried to mumble, but it came out slurred. There was no accusation in his tone. The drugs, the pills, were still swirling through his body, making his mind foggy and relaxed, and he found himself not really caring that the man standing over him had put several bullets through his body. 

Bygones, Steve thought hazily. Let bygones be cyborgs. No, that wasn't--

Bucky looked unsettled, frozen. His lips were pulled into a tight frown, and he stared down at Steve with something akin to betrayal. 

'It's okay,' Steve hurried to clarify, closing his eyes and letting his cheek fall back against the soft pillow. 'You're fixing it.'

'Trying,' Bucky murmured, and reached out to put his metal hand on Steve's shoulder. The chill broke through the fog, and Steve cracked an eye open. 'Armchair,' he prompted. 

Wracking his brains, Steve tried to remember what on earth the word could be referring to. 'Bed,' he replied, questioningly. Bucky nodded. What? 'Huh?'

Eyes narrowing, Bucky tilted his head to get a closer look into his eyes. Steve tried to concentrate on his gaze, but everything was moving, Bucky's dark pupils blurring with motion, and nothing would stay _still_ long enough to focus on it. 

'We're moving you to the armchair while I change the sheets,' Bucky said, slowly. 

Steve huffed. 'Well, you could have _said_.' He tried to push himself up to sit, and Bucky immediately moved closer, bringing his other hand out to support him. 

'Slow,' he urged, but Steve didn't pay him much heed. The patch on his arm was still dosing him with painkillers, numbing everything. He moved cautiously though, aware of tubes leading from his arm and penis to the intravenous pole. Bucky squeezed at his shoulder, urging him to stop moving when he swung his legs off the side of the bed. 'Hold still.'

Steve sat there for a moment, wriggling his toes in the cool air of the apartment and blinking as his head swam. Now that he was sitting up the feeling of vertigo was returning and he felt weak, struggling to hold himself up of his own accord. He watched as Bucky unclipped the catheter bag, kneeling to strap it instead to Steve's leg like a gun holster. 

Out of the bed, Steve suddenly became dimly aware of his nakedness – he was covered only by taped on patches and bandages all over his chest and upper thigh. He didn't feel particularly dirty, so Bucky must have been keeping him clean, but he did feel exposed and somewhat vulnerable, even through the cloud of drugs. Perhaps particularly through the cloud of drugs. Dimly, Steve was aware that in normal circumstances he could probably fight off a mob of ten plus armed soldiers in the buff – but right now he was concerned that he wouldn't even make it the two feet from bed to armchair without stumbling to his knees. 

Once the catheter bag was securely in place, Bucky rose to his feet, one hand coming out to rest on Steve's back, the other taking him by the arm. He reminded him to move slowly again, and Steve did, getting to his feet unsteadily. 

The movement of actually standing up seemed to be enough to cut through the painkillers, sending a sudden spike of agony shooting up through his abdomen and lower back. He let out a gasp, and Bucky's fingers tightened on his arm. Knees feeling weak and unsupportive beneath him, Steve let himself be guided slowly to the chair, stumbling on each unsteady step. 

When Bucky helped lower him into the soft armchair, it was a breath of relief – but once triggered, the pain was now shockingly present, spiking through him, piercing through the pleasant, gentle fog of the painkillers and the pills he had taken. He grimaced, trying not to show too much of his discomfort. At least things seemed to have slightly more clarity; through the pain he realized he could actually focus his gaze, and locked it on Bucky's eyes, which were inspecting him carefully. 

'I'll give you a new patch soon,' Bucky assured him as he stepped back, satisfied that Steve was settled and at least moderately comfortable. He stepped away, turning to strip the sheets off the bed, and Steve watched idly, his blood pounding in his ears. 

Bucky wasn't naked like him. Bucky was wearing dark jeans and a long sleeved stone colored t-shirt. His socks were blue; the same color, Steve noticed, as the carpeting in the room. His hair was tied back messily today, held off his face with an elastic band, and he had shaved the stubble from his jaw. Steve couldn't quite focus enough to identify why it was so important to him that it looked like Bucky was taking care of himself, but it was. 

_He looks like a person_ , his brain supplied, the thought muddling up from somewhere subconscious. 

Bucky had clean sheets and blankets folded on the sofa next to the far wall, and after he had stripped down the bed, he picked them up and set about fitting the them onto the mattress. Steve's eyes fell on the old sheets – he could see a few splatters of blood dotting the white fabric, and glanced down at his own bandages. They were patterned with the stuff – mostly old and stained brownish yellow, but there was a blossoming section of bright red on the patch on his upper abdomen. 

He must have opened something up when he had gotten to his feet. Bucky was kneeling on the mattress, trying to get the corners of the fitted sheets into place, and Steve wondered if he should tell him about the wound opening. But the pills were still making it hard to really give a crap about anything much at all, so he just sunk deeper into the chair, and closed his eyes. 

When he opened them again, the bed was made, and the dirty blankets on the floor had disappeared. Steve could hear the rumbling and clunking _wrrrrrrrrrrrrr wrrrrrrrrrrrrrr_ of a washing machine humming nearby – in the bathroom, or the kitchen maybe. He blinked his eyes several times, and groaned. 

After a moment, Bucky came into his field of vision, tearing open another packet for another transdermal patch. 

'Sounds like an engine,' Steve mumbled vaguely about the washing machine, as Bucky plucked off the old patch and sealed the new one gently in its place. 

'Yeah, it does,' he replied, kneeling down in front of Steve. His fingers came up to hover over the fresh patch of blood on his bandages, and he frowned, but didn't look too concerned. 

He said something, but Steve didn't hear what it was. He was thinking about engines, the hum of machinery high up in the sky. 

'What happened on the helicarrier, Buck?' he asked, and the tightness to the other man's lips deepened. He was still kneeling, and he brought his hands up to Steve's naked knees and tightened his grip – almost bruising with the metal hand. 

'Look at me,' he directed, and Steve did. He looked down into Bucky's blue eyes, which were deep like the ocean and hard like a glacier. 'You have to concentrate, listen to me very carefully for a minute, okay?'

Steve nodded. His thoughts were like leaves drifting on an autumn wind, but he tried to grasp onto them, biting his lip and furrowing his brow. Bucky looked pleased at his attempt at attentiveness. 

'You can't ask me about that,' Bucky said. 'It's not allowed, alright?' The emphasis with which he said those words made them seem capitalized in Steve's mind. _Not Allowed_. 

'Why?' 

'Because I can only keep you so long as you're good,' Bucky answered. 'You have to behave, or they won't let me have you here with me.' His eyes widened, imploring, and Steve wanted to reach out and touch his face, but he didn't, suddenly cautious. 'I need to keep you, I'm looking after you. You need to stay with me.'

Steve dipped his head. 'You're looking after me,' he mumbled, and Bucky lifted one hand off his bare knee to take his hand, gripping it tight. 'You always do, Buck, I know you always do.'

Bucky smiled a slightly nonplussed and faint smile, and squeezed Steve's hand again, making sure he was focused on the present. 'So you'll be good,' he said, and it wasn't a question. Steve wasn't sure whether it was the drugs or Bucky's voice, but he was pretty sure it was physically impossible for him to disagree right now. After a moment, Bucky glanced at the bed. 'Do you want to lie down again?'

It was mild inside the apartment, but there was enough chill in the air to make Steve's skin prickle, so he nodded, thinking about getting under the clean, warm blankets. Tenderly, Bucky helped him get to his feet, and Steve could feel more blood seeping out into the bandage on his abdomen. Grimacing at the sensation – there was no pain, the patch had quickly masked that – Steve stepped towards the bed and lay down gingerly. 

Bucky helped him under the sheets, and rearranged the pillows until Steve was propped up and comfortable, his head lolling back against the cushioning and his eyes blinking heavily. The light coming in through the window was dull and gray, and when he closed his eyes he just saw pinkish shapes like diffused clouds behind his lids. 

'Good,' murmured Bucky, a metal hand coming out to stroke through Steve's hair. 'Good.'


	3. Chapter 3

For a while, Steve drifted somewhere on the edge of consciousness, idly listening to Bucky's movements around the apartment and letting his thoughts dissolve and abstract until they were dreams, and then letting them tether and clarify until he was more or less in reality again. He floated, drifting between the two states for a timeless period, as the washing machine whirred itself to completion. He listened as Bucky changed the sheets into the drier, and a new whirring started, of a different clarity. 

Sometimes, he thought he could hear Bucky whispering, murmuring in his ear. But it wasn't this Bucky, it was a different Bucky – a more familiar one, without the same firm edge that his (companion? captor? friend?), that _this_ Bucky possessed.

_– an't stay in bed all day, buddy, we gotta go out dancing with the gals later tonight, remember?_

Steve frowned. 'I ain't going out dancing tonight, Buck,' he mumbled, half-asleep. 

Above him, there was a soft, somewhat amused sound, and Steve cracked his eye open to see Bucky standing over him, with the blue plastic bed-tray again. 'No, you're not,' he said, and sat down on the edge of the mattress next to Steve's hip, putting down the tray. 

Steve rubbed at his eyes, yawning, and looked down at the plate. The food was more solid than last time, at least. The meal seemed to be mostly chopped up fresh or steamed vegetables, and some bread with avocado and salmon on it, cut into bite size squares. There was also a little bowl of fruit salad, a glass of water and – Steve noticed unhappily – two more white tablets. 

He didn't like those drugs. After however many hours had passed in a drifting haze, they were finally fading from his system, letting his thoughts start to clarify, gain sharper edges. The state they put him into was unpleasantly docile, too susceptible. They seemed to take his ability to care about anything. He wanted to care – he wanted to care where he was, he wanted to care about why he was here, he wanted to care about where his friends were. The drugs peeled all that away, so easily. 

Bucky picked them up first off the tray, holding them out for Steve and picking up the water. 

Steve didn't move to take the pills. 'I don't want to,' he confessed. 'They make me feel--'

Bucky cut him off. 'I know what it feels like,' he said. 'You have to.'

Without really meaning to, Steve felt his lips pressing tighter together, as if subconsciously sealing themselves against anything passing between them, and Bucky made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. 

'Take them,' he ordered, and reached out to pull Steve's hand forward, pressing the pills into his palm. Steve made no move to lift them to his mouth, so Bucky growled a little, and wrapped his metal hand firmly around Steve's wrist. 'This isn't a choice,' he said firmly. 'Take them, or I'll make you.'

Steve knew he was glaring at Bucky now, and at any other time he would have fought him on it. But the effects of the last dose of the drug was still lingering in his body, enough that arguing didn't really seem to be worth his while. Slowly, deliberately, he took the tablets into his mouth, and let Bucky feed him the water. He was careful about it, but not particularly gentle: there was none of the soft stroking at the nape of his neck, no tender touches. Once the pills were down, Bucky pulled away, and put the glass down again. 

He was looking down at his hands, clenching and unclenching his metal fist. 'They never,' he gritted out, and Steve saw a muscle in his jaw twitching. 'They never let me take them myself. Just held me down and forced them down my throat, held my mouth and nose covered until I swallowed. No water.'

Bucky's shoulders were trembling, but Steve couldn't tell whether it was from fear or rage, or neither. Something inside of him cracked. 'Okay,' he started, but Bucky interrupted him.

'I don't want to do that to you.'

'Okay, Bucky,' Steve murmured, and then, because he knew it was Bucky needed to hear: 'Thank you.'

The metal hand stopped clenching, and after a moment Bucky breathed out, the line of his shoulders no longer shaking. He looked at Steve, his eyes just a little distant and tired, but he just dipped his head a little, the tight line of his mouth softer. 

'Here,' he said, and picked up one of the slices of bread. 'Open your mouth.'

Steve licked his lips and parted them, eyes still locked on Bucky. He felt cautious and apprehensive ( _knew he wouldn't once the pills took effect properly_ ), but letting Bucky feed him seemed like the simplest way to ease the tension. Bucky still looked tense, in a way like he was ready to jump any second, but when Steve let him slip the bread and salmon into his mouth with no argument, he lost some of the rigidity to his posture. 

'The food went down okay yesterday?' he asked Steve, picking up a piece of steamed baby carrot from the plate. 

Steve nodded, and opened his mouth again for the next bite. It was almost hard to resist the urge to just lift his hand up to take it for himself – his fingers seemed to tremble a lot from the drugs, but he was perfectly capable of putting food in his mouth, at least with the arm that wasn't punctured and hooked up to a saline drip.

But it was almost nice to have Bucky feeding him. He had never done it before, but it still reminded Steve of days long, long ago when Bucky had looked after him, patiently nursing him through his various illnesses. And Bucky's hands were still the same as they had always been – maybe a little more calloused – and when Steve's tongue would flicker lightly over the pads of his fingers as he took the food from them, he could tell that Bucky still tasted the same as he always had, even if he had never exactly tasted him before. He just – there was something innately _Bucky_ to his presence, a smell or a taste that was so overwhelmingly familiar to Steve that even through the drugs and the confusion, it just felt... nice. 

And gradually, a certain tenderness returned Bucky's touches as he fed him, the previous disagreement over the pills forgotten. Steve polished off all the bread and the vegetables easily, so Bucky stroked his hand through his hair and helped him drink down a few mouthfuls of water, before moving on to the little bowl of fruit. 

The tangy, bitter sweetness of the first segment of tangerine hitting Steve's tongue immediately washed away a lingering taste of chemical dryness that he didn't even realize was lingering at the back of his mouth. 

' _Oh_ ,' he murmured in pleasure, crushing the fruit in his mouth, and swallowing around a quiet moan. Bucky looked amused, and curiously, he lifted his index finger and thumb to his own mouth, sucking lightly at the lingering tangerine juice there. 

Steve thought the tablets must be kicking in again, because suddenly he was just blinking heavily, feeling loose and pliant. 

'Open,' Bucky directed again, picking up another piece of sweet fruit, and feeding it between Steve's lips. The touch was so tender and cautious, and Steve ate gratefully, even as his vision started to swim and Bucky began to slip out of focus. 

His eyes threatened to drop shut, and with the world hazy like it was, Steve was growing concerned that he might not be able to keep down anything else that went in his mouth. But he was hesitant to say as much. Bucky was already picking up a slice of poached apple, and the last time Steve had said he didn't want something, it had upset Bucky. 

Steve wondered if saying he didn't want things was Not Allowed, like asking about what had happened was _Not Allowed_. Bucky _had_ said Steve needed to take whatever he was given. 

Against a swell of motion sickness, Steve opened his mouth, and let Bucky slip the soft apple past his lips. At any other time, it probably would have been delicious, but in this moment the drugs were making the world spin too much for Steve to even taste it – all he could feel was the force of his gag reflex threatening to block him from swallowing it down without bringing everything else back up. His eyes squeezed shut, watering, and he was just about to push it down his throat when he felt Bucky pressing a soft tissue to his mouth. 

'Spit it out,' he urged, and Steve did, still clenching his eyes closed and fighting back nausea. 'Too much?'

'Sorry,' Steve mumbled. 

Bucky didn't say anything, and Steve slowly managed to crack an eye open, needing to check whether he was annoyed again. But Bucky was just lifting the bowl of fruit up, eating the remaining pieces himself, the tissue holding the half-chewed piece of apple left discarded on the tray. He smiled wanly at Steve around a slice of pear. 

'You're supposed to take them with food,' Bucky said, and it took Steve a moment to realize he was talking about the pills again. A vague feeling of frustration clenched in his stomach at how quickly he lost trains of conversation while on this stuff. 'But they made me sick too. Trust me, it's worse if you _don't_ eat with them.'

Steve nodded agreeably, feeling drowsy. Bucky sighed, reaching out with his fingers to brush a stray lock of hair away from Steve's forehead. 'See?' he stressed. 'It's easier like this, isn't it?'

Humming at the feeling of Bucky's hand gently stroking over his hair, Steve had to admit that there was a certain pleasant relief to having all the concern and responsibility drained from his awareness.

'Easy,' he repeated, smiling up at Bucky as he tried not to drift off into sleep yet again. 'Yeah.'

*

More time slipped effortlessly by, the light coming in through the blinds looking roughly like late afternoon. What did it matter? Steve watched dust particles drift on the air, and out the corner of his eyes saw Bucky moving about. He disappeared into the kitchen for a while, and eventually reappeared, settling down on the sofa under the window and eating a sandwich. Steve just watched lazily – occasionally Bucky would look up and catch his eye, but made no attempt at conversation. 

It didn't matter ( _nothing mattered_ ); boredom could not touch Steve, his grasp on time too nebulous to worry about it passing. But eventually, Bucky did wander over, standing over Steve at the bedside, and rubbed his neck thoughtfully.

'Hey,' Steve said, trying to push himself up on the pillows a bit. Bucky winced a little, and immediately moved to help him, rearranging the pillows behind him until he was almost sitting up normally. 

'… I'm going to get some things,' Bucky commented after a considering pause, and disappeared into the bathroom. Steve watched the door swing halfway closed, and listened as Bucky washed his hands and pulled things out of cupboards, before coming back into the living room with a small tray which he put on the bedside table. There were some packaged gloves on the tray, some alcohol wipes, cotton pads and medical tape, and a syringe. 

Dimly, Steve thought that if he wasn't so foggy with drugs right now, he might be concerned. 

Before anything else, Bucky just checked that the saline bag hanging on the I.V. stand was completely empty, before detaching it from the cannula in Steve's arm. He picked up one of the cotton pads from the tray and pressed it to the point where the cannula entered Steve's vein, and plucked away the old medical tape holding the needle in place before pulling it out of Steve's arm. The sensation of the needle being dragged from his vein was slightly uncomfortable for a moment, but quickly Bucky had it out, and was pushing the cotton pad firmly against the little hole. 

'Press that there,' he directed Steve, guiding his hand to push the pad in place. Steve watched with distracted eyes as Bucky cut off a little strip of medical tape, and replaced Steve's fingers to hold the cotton in place, giving him a pleased look. 'Alright?'

Steve just shrugged. 'Uh huh.'

'Lots of water,' Bucky said thoughtfully, and gestured at the blankets on the bed. 'I'm going to pull these away and remove the catheter.'

Steve's stomach dipped a little bit with distant discomfort, but he nodded and made some clumsy movements to push the blankets down over his hips. But now Bucky's came to nudge his away, pulling the blankets down neatly so that they folded at Steve's knees. Steve looked at the tubing coming out of his penis, and the semi-full Foley bag strapped to his leg. He could hear Bucky opening the packet that contained the gloves, and pulling them on. 

The semi-transparent blue glove over his metal hand looked slightly absurd, Steve thought in hazy amusement. He grinned at Bucky, who just shook his head and propped himself on the bed, checking the level of urine in the bag. 'Just under 300mls,' he muttered to himself, and reached over to grab one of the alcohol wipes off the tray. 

Opening the packet, Bucky carefully wiped the connection between the drainage tubing and the catheter, and Steve tried not to shift uncomfortably in place. He reminded himself that Bucky must have already put the catheter _inside_ in the first place, but still, watching Bucky work so deliberately around his penis made Steve feel very, very exposed. He felt his cheeks flush, and lifted up one hand to swipe at his hairline. 

Bucky glanced up at him, but didn't say anything about Steve's obvious discomfort. He just picked up the sterile syringe, and slid it into the balloon port on the catheter. Fluid came out as he drew back the plunger; Steve couldn't really feel anything at this point, except for vague movement around his genitals, and soon enough Bucky detached the syringe and looked up at him. 

'Almost done,' he said, and Steve mumbled out something positive, still blushing deep red. The next thing he felt was Bucky slowly tugging the catheter out – the sensation as it left his bladder was uncomfortably strange, almost as if the tube of the catheter was gripping to the bladder the way ice grips to the tongue. 

After a moment of discomfort, however, the sensation was gone, and Bucky was putting the catheter into a plastic bag before unstrapping the Foley bag from Steve's leg and getting up to empty the urine into the toilet. He packed everything up carefully as Steve adjusted to the feeling of no longer having tubing going up his penis. It was better, he thought after a moment, as the residual discomfort faded and the drugged haze began to soften everything again. 

Bucky came back over to the bedside with a full glass of water, sitting on the mattress, his hands bare and washed. He looked down at the way Steve's blanket was still folded down at his knees, and made a short _tsk_ -ing noise, putting the glass down and fixing up the blankets so they rested at Steve's hips. 

'Tell me whenever you need to get up,' Bucky said as he tucked the sheets into place. 'I'll help you.'

'Yeah.' Steve let his mind wander as Bucky picked up the glass of water again and guided it to his lips. He found himself thinking distantly of his friends, his mind supplying mocking statements in Natasha's voice at the sight of him having water gently poured into his mouth, while he lay useless in bed. 

_Years catching up to you, grandpa?_

_Aw, arthritis playing up again?_

He choked on a mouthful of water as he chuckled a little at the thought, and after a moment registered Bucky's eyes looking searchingly into his. 

'Why are you laughing?' he asked, sounding slightly affronted, and the offense in his tone only made Steve laugh harder, feeling weightless. There was a damp, cool feeling on his chest where some of the water had spat out of his mouth, and Bucky was helpfully wiping it away with the corner of his sleeve, still looking confused.

'Sorry,' he replied, grinning. 'Just thinking about a friend.'

That made Bucky frown, and Steve hesitated. Suddenly, he wanted to ask after Natasha, wondering if Bucky would even know where she was, what she was doing. He wasn't laughing anymore, actually. The drugs stopped him feeling concerned or lingering too much on anything outside of the present, but dimly he wondered if he could ask Bucky about his friend's whereabouts, or whether that fell under the umbrella of things that were Not Allowed. 

'Can I ask--' he started, and Bucky immediately cut him off with a sharp: 'No.'

_No_. Simple clarity. Steve closed his mouth, ducked his head. He felt Bucky's hand – the flesh and blood one – come out to hold his own, thumb sliding over his palm. 

'Good,' Bucky said in a low voice. 'You're doing good.'

'I...' he started, but the glass was already being pressed up to his lips again, and Bucky was talking. 

'You need to drink,' he was saying, 'and we need to keep track of how much urine you expel over the next day or so. I'll take your temperature after you've finished drinking this, but then you should shower.'

Drinking down the water, Steve just nodded acquiescently, successfully distracted. Bucky was still rubbing soft circles into his palm, and it was soothing and tethering, keeping him still in the quiet foggy haze that Bucky had built for him. 

*

The patch on Steve's arm was still releasing painkillers steadily into his body, but standing up under the hot, sharp spray of water, it sure as hell didn't feel like it. 

He hissed and braced himself on the wall as he tried to stay upright. The shower was the sort where each burst of water felt like a sharp needle darting under the skin. Usually Steve preferred that sort of spray; it was invigorating, and gave him a sense of actually getting clean. But right now, it was, well, yeah. Just painful, and oversensitive. Even through the padding of the patch, he could feel it hitting the wound on his back, almost making it feel like he was being shot all over again. 

On the other side of the glass, Bucky was stripping down quickly, and he swore a little as he ducked into the shower after Steve. 'Shit, shit,' he sputtered, reaching for the shower head and fiddling with a dial on the side. Instantly, the water pressure shifted to something more gentle, and Steve let out a sigh of relief. Bucky turned to him, fingers coming out immediately to check his bandages, nudging Steve around to look at his back. 

'It doesn't matter if these get wet?' Steve asked belatedly, looking down at the bandages. 

Bucky just shrugged. 'Don't want them to soak, but a shower should be fine.'

Legs trembling, Steve concentrated on staying upright. His head was swimming, and he felt bile rising up in his throat with the effort of standing. The nausea was like a punch to the gut, back when a punch to the gut would have had him on his knees and gasping for breath. 

He was on his knees, gasping for breath, and Bucky was down in front of him, his hair plastered to his neck and rivulets of water sliding down the shining metal of his arm. 

'Hey,' Bucky murmured, bringing his hands out to steady him. 'Hey, it's alright. Stay on the floor.'

Steve shifted so that he was slumped against the shower wall, and the tiles under his legs were cool and grounding. It wasn't so dizzying down here. 

'Don't worry,' Bucky was saying, reaching up to pluck down shampoo and body wash off the rack above them. 'You're not used to standing up, and you're still healing.'

_And you've loaded me up with whatever psychoactive drug those pills are made outta, don't forget that..._

The slightly bitter thought cut through his hazy fog just for a moment, but Bucky was already squeezing shampoo into his palms and reaching out towards his head. Fingers massaging gentle circles into his scalp chased away the accusing thought, and Steve relaxed against the tile wall. The water was just a gentle rainfall now, warming and pleasant, although the pain in his wounds still thudded past the barrier of his painkillers. 

Bucky cleaned him with a sense of perfunctory precision, moving Steve under the spray when he needed to wash his hair, and slathering body wash that smelled vaguely of disinfectant into his skin until he was clean. Armpits, genitals, feet. Steve just closed his eyes against the spray of water hitting his face, thinking that Bucky's metal hand felt like the cool tiles. Vaguely, he reached up to touch it – following the movements of the hard fingers over his own body. 

'Tilt your head forward,' Bucky muttered, nudging Steve's neck under the spray to wash suds of shampoo out of the base of his hair. Steve hummed, and tilted his head acquiescently. 

'How come you never call me by my name, Buck?' he asked, the thought coming up out of nowhere. Steam from the hot water was thickening the air, and Steve breathed in deeply through his nose, feeling Bucky's human fingers scraping through the roots of his hair. 

Bucky was quiet. 

'Hey, Barnes,' Steve prompted, hearing his voice come out teasing. 'Asked you a question.'

He had, hadn't he? Or maybe he hadn't asked it aloud. He was just about to repeat himself when Bucky nudged his head back up, and Steve blinked his eyes through the spray of water from above, droplets catching on his eyelashes, stinging slightly. 

His expression looked torn, like he was having an internal debate on how to answer, but finally he just shrugged and said: 'Who else would I be talking to, idiot?'

That made Steve laugh, and it made Bucky smile like he had gotten something right. He got to his knees, turning off the water, and knelt down in front of Steve again. The air was suddenly chilled, and carefully, Bucky helped Steve to his feet. The vertigo kicked in almost immediately as he got up, but not as bad as before, and with slippery hands Bucky was beside him, supporting him. Steve found his gaze lingering curiously on the scarred skin where the metal arm was fused to strong flesh. 

'My name isn't Barnes,' Bucky said as he helped Steve out of the shower, reaching for a towel to dry Steve off. 'And you shouldn't call me _Bucky_ either, I don't know why the hell you do.'

'Because it's who you are.'

Bucky got down on his knees, motioning for Steve to stay standing, and started to rub the towel over his legs and ankles, drying him down. 'I don't know about that.'

Steve frowned. 'Am I not allowed--?'

'I don't care what anyone calls me,' Bucky interrupted, moving the towel up Steve's body systematically. Steve swayed a little against way the room was tilting. 'I'm just saying. I don't need a name, you don't need one either. Not anymore.'


	4. Chapter 4

The next day – at least Steve thought it was the next day, it was hard to say for sure – the little tube of opaque milky-white liquid came back. Bucky was perched on the mattress next to him when Steve's eyes flickered open from a light doze, and the first thing he saw was the glint of the metal hand and the needle of the syringe in the morning light from outside. 

Then the chilly sensation of an alcohol wipe dragging over the crook in Steve's arm. 

'What,' he started, voice cracking from grogginess. Numbly, he gestured at the needle. Bucky looked up at him – it seemed he hadn't noticed Steve waking up. 

'I'm just going to put you under for a little while,' he said, checking the syringe for air bubbles. He tapped it lightly, and glanced at the door. Steve followed his gaze. Huh. He hadn't really registered the door, until now, but there it was. He hadn't seen Bucky use it. Idly, he wondered if it was locked. 

He felt a finger on his jaw, turning his head around. _Okay_ , he thought. _Looking at the door is discouraged._ Bucky was peering searchingly into his eyes, but Steve just blinked groggily at him, and apparently that was good. 

'Just relax for a moment,' Bucky said, pressing the needle of the syringe into the soft skin of Steve's arm. The hole from the cannula had already healed up, and there was no pain as Bucky pieced it anew. Steve watched the needle sink into his skin, and felt that thick, viscous push of the opaque substance through his blood. 

The bed dropped out from under him, his stomach dipping like he was going over the highest point of the Cyclone. Feeling the same sudden rush of exhilaration, Steve laughed. 

'Whoa, Bucky, you trying to make me puke?' he chuckled, and concern flickered through the other man's eyes, making Steve grin wider. 

'It shouldn't make you feel sick,' Bucky said, coming up closer onto the bed to look Steve over in concern. His gaze flickered to the vial, checking he had given Steve the right dosage. It was really funny, for some reason, to see him looking so immediately anxious when Steve himself felt so suddenly euphoric. 

'Feels amazing,' he assured Bucky, wanting to explain, pleasure crashing through his body in waves. 'I was just, remembering when we were kids, and...' 

Bucky's brows pulled together as Steve's sentence trailed off. Everything was slowing down, and Steve scrunched up his face, blanking on what he had been saying. 'Never mind,' he mumbled, still grinning. He waved it off, and his hand seemed to move like slowed down frames on an old movie reel. 'Tell you later.'

'Alright,' Bucky replied, and the last thing Steve felt before everything went dark was his hand rubbing soothing circles on his shoulder, exactly how he had after Steve had puked his guts up at Coney Island. 

*

He woke up feeling washed out and trembling again, but this time Bucky was already there with a glass of water and a mug full of warm soup. No pills, Steve noticed happily – but could still feel the last dose affecting him, so maybe it just wasn't time for the next round yet. Even as he shivered with artificial cold, everything seemed soft and blurred out, like Vaseline on a camera lens. God, he wondered if he could even remember what clarity _felt_ like. 

Bucky lifted the red ceramic mug to his lips, helping him swallow down a mouthful of the soup, and Steve let the thought go. Clarity didn't matter anymore. The taste that filled his mouth was pleasant and sweet, but had the lingering flavor of chemicals or preservatives, making him suspect it came powdered from a packet. 

'Still can't cook?' he asked Bucky lazily, and got a shrug in return. The soup was doing its job at least, warming him up pleasantly, chasing away the lingering chills from the anesthetic. 

It wasn't until Steve got to the very bottom of the mug, swallowing down the last mouthful, that he even noticed anything had changed inside the apartment. He blinked in sudden confusion, looking around. There were a handful of books on the dresser on the wall that he was pretty sure hadn't been there before, and a small digital radio sitting on the coffee table next to the sofa. 

The blinds on the window were, if not open, at least pulled up a little bit, and the window underneath was cracked open to let in the smell of fresh air and the noises of traffic. There wasn't really any view from the bed, but he thought he could see the roof of a mid-rise building nearby, and a glimpse of the spire of the Chrysler Building. 

There was also a pair of pajama pants and a plain white t-shirt folded at the base of the bed. Steve looked at Bucky curiously. 'Did you go out?'

A short huff and a grimace, and Steve took in the bitter touch to Bucky's expression. 'No.'

That meant other people had come in, Steve realized. They had been in here while he was knocked out, naked and vulnerable in the bed, and he didn't even know who they were. Concern and vague curiosity lingered in his consciousness, just out of reach, and he licked his dry lips. 'Who?'

'My-' Bucky paused, ducking his head as he corrected himself, lips drawn tight. ' _Our_ handlers.' An unconscious tap of his finger on the bedspread next to Steve's knee. 'Or someone employed by them. They're gone now.'

He picked up the glass of water, and guided Steve's hand up to take it. He did, hesitant, surprised Bucky wasn't helping him drink it himself. It was fine; his hands were a bit shaky still from the stuff that had put him out, but he could hold the glass no problem. Bucky watched him carefully as he lifted it to his mouth, and took a slow sip. 

'Good,' he said tersely, getting up. 'Drink the whole glass.' Steve watched as Bucky wandered away into the kitchen, his shoulders a set line under the fabric of the t-shirt he was wearing. He looked like he was about to snap, and sure enough, once he was out of Steve's eye line, he heard the heavy sound of metal hitting the surface of the kitchen counter, and Bucky swearing tightly under his breath. 

Then everything was quiet. Steve drank his water quickly, not caring that Bucky always told him to go slow, listening for any more noises from the kitchen. Concern niggled at him through his drowsiness, and when several minutes passed with no more sound from Bucky, Steve started to wonder if he was okay. Anxiety prickled under his skin like needles. 

It was always hard to concentrate, hard to get his body to coordinate while on these drugs, but slowly, wincing, Steve slid his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet. The floor was like loose sand underneath him, shifting as he tried to take a step, almost sending him slipping to his knees, but he steadied himself on the bed frame, taking small, cautious movements towards the kitchen. 

He had moved around a little bit – just between the bed and the bathroom, with Bucky's assistance – but this was his first time walking unaided since, well, since whatever had happened, had happened. The room was mostly shifting points of light and colors. Steve could barely focus on details when the world was spinning like this, but with some effort he managed to prop himself on the wall, and stagger over to the kitchen. Pain shot like electricity under his sensors, barely registered. 

The journey wasn't far, but it felt like a mile. When he felt carpet shift to tile under his bare feet, Steve dropped to his knees, letting the world come into sharp relief again. 

Bucky was sitting on the kitchen floor, back against the door of the fridge, his elbows propped on his knees and palms digging into his forehead. Out of the corner of his eyes, he looked at Steve askance, and the muscles in his face tightened, fingers clenching in his hair. 

'What are you doing out of bed?' he sighed, his voice surprisingly gentle for the agitation in his stature. He sounded like the old Bucky, just for a moment, seeing Steve stumble out into their old living room when he should've been sleeping, fighting off one of the many fevers he had caught back in the day. 

'Checkin' on you.' The world was still spinning under his knees, but not so bad as when he stood up, and the painkillers were successfully masking any discomfort in his torso. Bucky made an irritated sound with his tongue anyway, but brought his hands away from his forehead to reach out for Steve and pull him closer. He wasn't quite sure what Bucky was going for, but Steve immediately fell in for a tight hug, wanting to wash away the strain written all over his expression. 

He buried his face into Bucky's neck, hair tickling at his nose, and felt his hands freeze in mid air for a moment before settling on Steve's bare back. The position was awkward, crowded and uncomfortable, but Bucky gently rearranged them until his legs were sprawled and Steve was nestled sideways between them, arms still wrapped around his neck and head buried in his collarbone. 

'You must be cold,' Bucky said after a long moment of the embrace, but Steve shook his head, not minding his nakedness. The most important thing was chasing that anguish out of Bucky's mind. He might not like all the drugs Bucky gave him, but the essence of it was, he was here, and he was looking after Steve. That was all that mattered, so now it was Steve's turn to look after _him_. 

As the minutes wore on, the tension eased from Bucky's body, and eventually Steve felt him sigh, the warmth of it ruffling over his hair. 

'I'm sorry,' Bucky murmured. 'Shouldn't have worried you.'

'What happened?' Steve asked, the words coming out mumbled against Bucky's shirt collar. 

'Nothing, I--' Bucky bit his lip, taking in a breath. His next words came out monotonous, as if he were reciting something someone had told him, rather than speaking his own. 'I forgot my place.' He reached one hand up to stroke his thumb over Steve's neck. 'Just for a moment.'

A frown tugged at Steve's lips. 'I don't get it, Buck.'

Lips pressed softly to the crown of his head, and he felt Bucky grip him a little tighter. 'It's real simple,' he said. 'Things are different now, but there is order to everything. Everything, everyone has a role, has a position in the chain of command. Yours, is here with me. You're _mine_.' He paused for a moment, lips still brushing Steve's hair. 'And I am theirs. But this?' He held Steve tighter still, hugging his naked body as close to him as he could, and though he was still groggy with drugs, the room still spinning a little under him, Steve held himself closer to Bucky in return. 'This is the best it's ever been.'


	5. Chapter 5

More pills. More pills with dinner, as always. Steve scowled at them, but he let Bucky put them in his hand and swallowed them down without any argument. 

He was wearing pajamas now. Bucky had helped him into them once they finally made it off the kitchen floor and back over to the bed. The white t-shirt covered the mess of bandages all across Steve's torso, and the soft pants were warm enough that he didn't have to lie under the blankets, instead just sitting up with his back against the head board and knees pulled up slightly. 

Bucky nodded favorably as the pills went down, and sat down on the bed, yawning a little. There were two bowls of tuna salad on the bed tray, but he just picked up the one, ready to help Steve eat before he himself did. 

He looked tired, and as he dipped the fork into the bowl Steve noticed he was holding his shoulders strangely, as if one the flesh and blood one were hurting him. Steve frowned, but opened his mouth obediently when Bucky held out the first forkful out to him, and chewed and swallowed before asking. 'Is your arm okay?'

Bucky looked up, apparently slightly startled at the question. 'Yeah,' he replied tightly. 'It's fine.' He lifted the fork to Steve's mouth again. 'I told you, I forgot my place.'

Steve chewed. Swallowed. 'What happens when you forg-'

'You get reminded,' Bucky interrupted him tersely. 'Don't ask me about it anymore.'

'But, if you're hurt--' 

'I said _don't_.' His voice was stern, but not angry. Steve closed his mouth immediately, words dying away in his throat. He let Bucky feed him another mouthful of salad. It didn't really look like he was in severe pain, but he was moving his arm in a tight, restrained way that made Steve think of a dislocated and relocated joint. 

Some part of Steve, tamped down with drugs and suppressed, wanted to fight Bucky on this until he let him check that he was okay. He probably hadn't even iced it properly. Had always been terrible for taking too much care looking after Steve, and then not taking enough with himself. 

But he couldn't get the words out, couldn't argue. Bucky's words about the drugs, _it's easier like this, isn't it?_ swam through Steve's head as the fork rose and dipped between his mouth and the bowl, as Bucky's eyes roamed over his face, watching him carefully, considerately. 

The nausea didn't hit him until after the last bite was down and swallowed, for once. Slumping slack against the cushions behind him, Steve looked up at the ceiling and counted blurry bugs in the light fitting. Oh, it was easier, alright. 

That first wave of foggy haze hit him quickly, and he drifted comfortably on it while Bucky ate his own meal at a steady pace. Steve felt his legs slacken and give, spreading out, and distantly felt Bucky shift a little so that one of them was draped over his lap. This first effect of the pills was always the strongest – it made him feel like he was sinking into the mattress and the pillows, as if he couldn't tell quite where his body began or ended.

He could feel Bucky stroking soft circles on his thigh with one hand, but it felt soft and tingly, like the sensation of someone's finger hovering just over skin and not quite touching it. Steve shivered pleasantly. 

But eventually Bucky got to his feet, packing up the dinner and leaving Steve to drift aimlessly, pliant and easy. Steve heard the taps running in the kitchen, and the sound of bowls clinking in the sink. 

The next thing Steve felt was water soft hands plucking away the transdermal patch on his arm. He blinked his eyes open. Bucky was standing over him, opening another packet and pulling out a fresh one. 'Huh, 'm not in pain, Buck,' he mumbled out. 

Bucky snorted. 'Yeah, because of the painkillers.'

Shaking his head, Steve ran his hand down his chest, prodding numbly at the spots on his torso where he had been shot. ( _Where Bucky had shot him_ ). He could hardly feel his own finger pressing through the fabric of his shirt, although he knew it was. Could see it. But it felt just like nudging at, at the top of the soufflé, that was all he could think of. Mostly air. 'Think I'm healin' up.'

Bucky looked at him strangely. 'There was fresh blood on the bandages on your back,' he replied, looking down at Steve's arm as he fixed the fresh patch in place. 'You didn't feel the wound open?'

Steve shook his head, and Bucky looked down at the painkillers. Shrugged. 'Okay, they're stronger than I thought then,' he said, apparently unbothered. He saw Steve's frown, and quickly assured him: 'It wasn't much. You must just have done it when wandering about before.'

'Wasn't wandering about,' Steve muttered, sinking his head back into the cushions, still distracted by the thought that his wound had reopened and he hadn't even felt it. 'Coming to you.'

There was a brief pause – pauses were like nothingness, just floating moments of comfortable space – and then it was just the push of fingers through Steve's hair, just over the temple. Thumb rubbing soft circles in the hollow below his ear. 'I know,' Bucky said. 'Gotta be careful though.'

Steve grinned. 'When have I ever been careful, Bucky?'

He could hear the distant, echoing voice of the other Bucky, not real: _Shut up, you little punk. You know you can't always be--_

'I don't know,' Bucky replied. 

*

'Where do you sleep?' Steve asked. Bucky had turned the radio on; not very loud, but for once the room was filled with noise rather than just formless silence. The music was good. It gave Steve something to tether himself to, even if he didn't recognize it, and forgot most of what he heard as soon as the song was over. 

Bucky was coming out of the bathroom, his hair damp from a shower and shirtless, rolling his shoulder in its socket and cricking his neck uncomfortably. 

'Huh?' he said, and then: 'Oh. Wherever. The couch, usually.'

'I don't see you.'

Bucky sighed and wandered over to the dresser, looking at the books that had arrived that day. 'Don't sleep much,' he muttered, and picked one of the novels up, seemingly at random. 

Arm loose and floppy, eyes half lidded, Steve patted the mattress beside him. 'Read over here,' he said, and Bucky half-smiled. But his movements were stiff and slightly hesitant as he climbed up onto the bed next to Steve, crossing his legs and opening the book in his lap. 

'Remember when I used to get so sick with fever,' Steve murmured over the sound of people talking unintelligibly between songs on the radio, 'that I couldn't even see the words on the page because everything was spinning too much?' 

Bucky made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. 

'So you would get up on the bed with me and read stuff aloud? And it didn't even matter what you were reading. Half the time it was just our homework.'

'Homework...' repeated Bucky, sounding like he was testing the sound of the word on his tongue. Steve glanced over, and he looked up from the book. 'Do you want me to read to you?'

'You don't have to, I just...'

'I will. But I don't remember...' Bucky pressed his lips together tersely. 'Just for a little while, okay?'

'You don't remember reading to me?'

Bucky shook his head. 

'But, how can you not--'

'I just don't.'

Steve frowned. 'Bucky, I don't get what's happened to--'

The book snapped closed. 'No questions,' Bucky said, firmly. Steve felt the bed sway underneath him, as if adrift on a river. His brain felt waterlogged and cloudy. 

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to,' he murmured, his eyes closing as he tried to fight past the feeling of wooziness. 'Just read to me, Buck. I won't ask.'

'You _can't_ ,' Bucky emphasized, a note of pleading in his voice. 'You really gotta be good.'

Steve swallowed. 'I was, I was just confused,' he insisted, and cracked his eyes open again when he heard Bucky sigh. He was nodding, his long hair hanging past his cheeks, and slowly he opened the book again. 

'Okay,' he said. 'Alright. Just don't worry about stuff like that.'

And slowly, he started reading. 

Before, when Bucky had read to Steve when he was sick, his voice had always been a low, slightly sarcastic drawl – as if he were put upon by having to read aloud. It was always a joke; they both knew it was a joke, and whenever Steve glanced up at Bucky's face he would be grinning ear to ear. But he had known that Steve would feel babied if Bucky read to him earnestly, so (like many things they did – sharing a bed and grousing at each other about cold feet and pointy elbows, or fighting over who had put more money in for rent that month when they both knew it was Bucky) the whole thing had to be veiled in a layer of sarcasm and teasing to make it palatable. 

He wasn't reading like that now. Now, his voice was clear and precise, not a hint of a drawl to it. He read without emotion, like he was delivering a report, his head bowed down to the book in his lap, and it made Steve's brows draw together in distaste. 

'Stop,' he said after several minutes, and Bucky immediately cut himself off mid sentence. Then narrowed his eyes, slightly. 

'What?'

'Come up here,' Steve said, beckoning with his hand. Bucky looked skeptical for a moment, but eventually nodded, shuffling up the bed and lying down, resting his head on Steve's chest and holding the book in front of him. It was a reverse of their old positions, when Steve would lie bracketed in by Bucky's arms and watch the print vaguely spinning on the page in front of them both, doing his best to concentrate despite the fever. 

This time, when Bucky started to read again, he gradually relaxed. The book wasn't particularly good – not particularly bad, either. Clearly just something picked off the fiction shelf at random. It didn't matter. Steve was barely following along, but the sound of Bucky's voice, rumbling and progressively smoother just let him drift on a haze of comfort, the words washing over him like gently crashing waves. 

_Just for a little while_ , turned out to be several hours, until Bucky's voice started to strain and the sun set outside. 

*

Steve woke without realizing he had even drifted off to sleep, but the night had slipped away regardless. Through the small crack of the blinds, Steve could see the pastel colors of purple and gold painting the sky with sunrise. 

To his surprise, Bucky was still on the bed, asleep. The book was open, lying on the mattress face down, forgotten. His head was resting in the crook of Steve's shoulder. He did not look peaceful, however; face tight and lips drawn together, his body a rigid line. One hand was clutching the blankets, gripping on tight, while the other hand – the metal one – was resting up around his own throat. 

Steve looked down at him and frowned, rubbing his eyes blearily with the hand that wasn't trapped under Bucky's shoulders. He felt rested, although still loose and drowsy from the pills, but vaguely he was aware that he would need to use the bathroom soon. He didn't want to wake Bucky, though. His eyes were flickering behind his lids, and he looked like he was probably having an unpleasant dream; soft, choked off noises catching in his throat. Still, he was asleep. 

But it turned out it didn't matter how still and quiet Steve stayed, because Bucky woke up soon after him anyway. He woke with a sharp intake of breath and his eyes flying quickly open, his whole body tensing up. 

'Buck, Bucky, it's okay,' Steve mumbled, turning his head on the pillow to look at his friend. But Bucky was already pushing himself up onto his elbows, looking around in alarm. His eyes went to the windows and the door and the radio – which was still softly playing music – before he finally relaxed a little and breathed out. 

'Oh, hell,' he said, tugging his fingers through his hair, catching on knots. 'I didn't mean to sleep that long.'

Steve's lips quirked up. Bucky was glancing over at him now, looking him over carefully. 'You got anywhere to be?' he asked, and Bucky smiled just a little in return. 

'Guess not, no.'

*

The day passed easily and quietly. Bucky soon climbed out of bed and stretched, before helping Steve patiently to the bathroom and then maneuvering them both into the shower. Despite the apparent discomfort while actually sleeping, Bucky seemed to have benefited from a full night's rest. He seemed calm and content, and spent most of the morning and afternoon in a fairly agreeable mood. 

He took his time with breakfast, making the effort to scramble some eggs – one of the only things he'd ever perfected cooking, and it seemed that the skill had never faded – and shared them with Steve in bed with some toast. He checked the transdermal patch on Steve's arm before settling them both into bed with the book again. 

Steve felt lazy and happy. It was like that quiet stretched out feeling of a properly spent Sunday – the Sundays back in Brooklyn, when they'd had nothing to worry about other than money and Steve's health, and nothing to do except listen to the radio and read. 

It wasn't until dinnertime that anything went wrong. 

He didn't _mean_ to disobey. Not exactly. It just kind of happened. 

He really didn't like taking the pills. 

And the thing was, contentedness seemed to make Bucky less cautious. The tablets came out with the tray of dinner and a glass of water, and he pushed them into Steve's hand as always and told him to swallow as he always did. But he didn't settle down on the mattress, inches away, watching carefully until they were down Steve's throat. No, instead he stayed standing and wandered over to the window to fiddle with the station on the radio. 

When he glanced back, Steve had put the water to his mouth and was swallowing down nothing, the tablets hidden under the pillow of the bed. 

Bucky nodded. 'Good,' he said, encouragingly.

Steve felt a wave of guilt rush through him, along with a tremor of exhilaration. Both feelings were tamped down, hazy from the drugs, but they were there.

And, eventually, his clarity started to come back: slowly, like a creeping thing. 

It was so gradual that it wasn't even until Steve found himself tensing up as Bucky lay back down on the bed after dinner, his heart constricting with fear in his chest, that he realized the effects of the drugs were even fading from his system. 

He didn't know what would happen if – when? – Bucky found the pills concealed under the pillow. What would happen when he found out Steve hadn't taken them. Shit. How had he even thought this would be a good idea? He knew he had to pretend to continue to be loose, relaxed, pliant and good – or else Bucky would notice. 

Steve fretted. What would he do when he gave him another dose of pills tomorrow? Would he take them? The sensation of apprehension, concern, agitation buzzing through his body was, at least, the proof that the was coming out of the agreeable, absent-minded fog of the drugs. 

Bucky wasn't reading; he had his eyes closed, almost like he was sleeping, but Steve could tell from the set of his shoulders and the tension in his body that he wasn't. That he was alert to every change in the environment, cautious and vigilant despite the presumed safety of the space. 

But to Steve he simply said: 'Relax.' His tone was marked with a slight frown, and Steve let out a breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding as he deliberately made his body unwind and sink into the pillows. His eyes flickered between Bucky's face and the outline of the pillow, watching to see whether the other man's hand would creep up for whatever reason and maybe shift the pillowcase. Maybe expose the hidden pills. 

Steve knew he had to move them – get rid of them somehow – but unless Bucky either went to sleep or got up and moved somewhere else, somewhere he wouldn't see, there was nothing for it. Feeling himself gnawing on his own tongue, Steve nearly winced. 

_Gotta relax_ , he reminded himself. Gotta just imagine like he was still just floating, phased out in that indistinct haze. 

After the loss of the feeling of absolute _not caring_ , the first thing he noticed about coming off the drugs was the sense of time returning. It first struck him when he realized that it was _dragging_ by, while he waited impatiently to hide the evidence of his disobedience. That was something that the pills had taken away: any sense of the passage of time: they made everything an everlasting present. 

Of course there _was_ a before – a before to this current situation – and Steve was vaguely, idly aware of that. But it sort of made everything that wasn't simply _now_ seem clumped together in a big blob-like mass of unimportance. 

On the drugs, it was like he knew that at some point he had been sickly and small, coughing up his lungs in the heart of Brooklyn winter. And he could remember standing on the upper levels of an exploding HYDRA base during the war, facing down Johann Schmidt. And he could easily recall spotting that gorgeous jogger who went around the DC Monument every morning at the same time as Steve did, and he could remember thinking that he should work up the guts to introduce himself:

But if you asked, any or all of those things would have happened on the same day. Hell, only minutes apart. There was no segue, no sequence of change. It was the past, and while on the pills, the past was basically one, huge, mono-event. 

That was changing now. 

*

Bile seared the back of Steve's throat as he retched into the toilet bowl. The smell of disinfectant and toilet cleaner was mingling with the bitter reek of vomit, clouding into his nostrils and making his throat clench painfully, even though he had already expelled everything in his stomach. 

Bucky stood in the bathroom doorway, his arms crossed. 

'Why didn't you wake me up?' he asked, voice low. Steve coughed, spit catching on his lower lip and hitting the porcelain walls of the toilet. 

'I just--' Steve's voice came out raspy and bitter, the words catching in his throat like chunks of half digested grit. 'You were sleeping, I didn't want to.'

He half expected Bucky to come down and sit beside him, rub soothing circles into his back and help him swallow down small sips of water until the taste of bile was washed away. But he didn't move from the door. 

'Are you okay?'

_The helicarrier, the fate of the world resting on these last thirty seconds, and he had gone down with a shot to the back. He had failed. How long ago had that been? There was no way of knowing for sure how much time he had been out when Bucky first brought him here, or what had happened before that. Had it been a fortnight? A month? He can hear Sam's last words to him through the earpiece, clear as day: 'I'm grounded. The suits down. Sorry Cap.'_

_If Steve hadn't managed to bring down the helicarrier, had those been the last words his friend ever spoke?_

Steve nodded, his cheek on the cool surface of the toilet seat as he looked up at Bucky. 'The nausea,' he said, his voice shaking. He hoped it sounded convincingly like he was still out on the drugs. 'Sorry.'

'Fine,' Bucky mumbled, expression still shuttered off. But he came over with a sigh and crouched down next to Steve. 'This is the first real adverse reaction you've had to 'em. It's odd.'

Steve barely heard him. The fog that had clouded everything in his brain for so long was still steadily lifting, clearing – things slotting together until they made such an awful, awful sense, painting the harsh reality of life outside these walls. 

He had failed. Sam. Natasha. Hill, Sharon, Fury: All of them. He had failed. Hundreds of thousands of people, all gone, and HYDRA's new world order established. It was his fault, it was all his fault. 

Steve retched into the toilet again, his throat searing in acidic agony. Bucky's metal hand came out to rub cool circles into his back through the fabric of the t-shirt. 

He had failed them all.


	6. Chapter 6

It took Steve a while to realize that the sickness turning tumultuously in his stomach and burning his throat wasn't simply a physical reaction to the revelation of what had happened ( _what he had let happen_ ) but was also simply a symptom of withdrawal from the pills. 

Whatever they were – now that he had a bit more clarity, he could rationalize that they seemed to be similar to some sort of Benzodiazepine related substance, but undoubtedly jacked up for his super soldier metabolism – they created a hell of a dependency. There was a pounding in his head, pain shooting through his temples and aching behind his eyes so that he could hardly keep them open. When he managed to keep them open without blinking heavily with the effort, there were red spots in his vision, like little flashes of light burned into his retina. His stomach felt cramped and bloated even though he hadn't eaten for hours, and had vomited it all back up already. 

His skin didn't feel real over his bones, and he couldn't, couldn't stop trembling, as if with cold. 

Bucky was noticing. 

'Drink this,' he said to Steve, holding out a glass filled with pink tinted, slightly bubbly liquid. Steve knew what it was – it was just one of those drinks that was all hydrolytes and electrolytes and tasted somewhere between sweetness and death reborn. He swallowed it down dutifully, liquid spilling out of the corner of his mouth as his hand shook on the glass. 

Bucky was watching him cautiously, not sitting or lying on the bed as usual. 'The tablets shouldn't be having this effect,' he said as he took the empty cup from Steve's hand before he could drop it. Steve just shrugged. 

He knew he had to act like he was still out of it, and he was trying. But the paralyzing, sickening thoughts of what the world might be like outside of these four walls ( _because of your failure_ ) made it hard to concentrate. Steve hadn't had many reference points in this new century, but those he had, all of them, each and every one, would have been considered a threat to HYDRA's security. Did that mean they were all gone? Was _everyone_ gone?

He thought of Peggy, lying in her hospital bed, slipping in and out of the present. How much of a threat was she?

How much of a threat was _he_ , Steve? Lying here, weak and injured and helpless – helpless even to fight back against his captor, because his captor was _Bucky_. Or, or the Winter Soldier, rather. That's what he had been called. 

But he was still Bucky. Steve could tell. Under everything, this was Bucky. Maybe this is just how it would always be. They could tear down everything else, every time, but after it all, it would just be Steve and Bucky, always. No matter what had changed about them, within them. 

Steve closed his eyes, and the back of Bucky's hand came out to touch his forehead. 'You don't have a fever,' he said, and pulled the chair up next to the bed to sit down. 

'I'm okay, Buck,' Steve lied, the words stumbling over his chattering teeth.

'Sure you are.'

I sounded so much like old Bucky, just for a moment. All eye rolling sarcasm and the shift of the chair another inch closer to the bed. The words buried themselves under Steve's skin like insects and he had to fight back a sob. Agitation, anxiety, desperation. They were scratching under his skin like insects hatching and crawling in his veins. 

It wasn't until some time later, Steve with his back against the cool glass of the shower door wondering if he was going to puke for a third time, that Bucky came and crouched in front of him, looking searchingly into his eyes and said:

'You didn't take them, did you?'

Steve wasn't even trying to hide his lucidity at this point. What did it matter? He looked back at Bucky with clear eyes and just shrugged, his throat too full with the itch of nausea to reply. Who cared about some dumb pills?

It was a surprise to Steve when Bucky's metal palm came out to collide with his cheek, the slap sending his neck turning and the back of his skull thudding against the glass. Steve sucked in a breath of shock, but barely registered any pain, the painkillers still feeding into his blood masking that well enough. It was a surprise, but maybe it shouldn't have been. 

'Goddammit!' Bucky shouted as he stood up and backed away, scraping his fingers roughly through his long hair. 

Steve glared up at him from the floor. His throat was still raw from retching, and his voice cracked whenever he spoke, but he managed to rasp out: 'I told you I didn't wanna take any of your goddamn pills, Buck.'

'They make it better!' Bucky snapped, and disappeared into the living area, slamming the bathroom door behind him, shutting Steve in. 

Steve just let his head thunk back against the glass and looked up at the ceiling. His cheek felt a little tingly where Bucky had slapped him, and the shower door was cool against his skin. He could hear the heavy sounds of Bucky moving like a storm about the apartment, despite his bare feet. He heard the blankets on the bed rustle as they were torn off, and a soft _thump_ as one of the pillows hit the wall. 

Then Bucky was thundering back into the bathroom, his metal hand clenched tight around the pills Steve hadn't taken. 

'Take them now,' he commanded, grabbing Steve's wrist to pull his hand up towards him, but Steve snatched it away. 

'No.'

' _Take. Them. Now._ '

' _No!_ '

In a heartbeat, Bucky was on him, hand coming out to wrench at Steve's jaw, thumb going between his lips and pulling down against his teeth until his mouth was forced open. Steve fought against it, struggled, but although he wasn't just a mess of loose, pliant limbs anymore, he was still injured and weak from withdrawal and Bucky could overpower him effortlessly enough. He pinned him down with his whole body and shoved the pulls into his mouth, pushing them down his gullet with metal fingers until Steve was nearly choking on them, covered Steve's mouth and nose with his palm and held him there. 

Steve coughed and tried to spit them up, tried to push Bucky away from him, but it was no use. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he choked on the pills, and in the end it was just an automatic reaction for his body to swallow them down. 

He retched, gasped into Bucky's palm, stilled. Glared up at his captor with challenge in his eyes. _You've got what you want now_. 

It took Bucky a moment before he took his hand away from Steve's mouth, prying with cool, metallic tasting fingers into the crevices of Steve's cheeks and tongue to check he wasn't hiding them. 

'For God's sake,' Bucky just muttered darkly, before finally leaning back, shifting his weight off Steve slightly. 'I didn't want to do that.'

Before he stood up, Bucky tore the transdermal patch off Steve's arm. He got to his feet, shaking and going back to tugging at his dark hair, fingers catching on knots. He looked Steve over. 

'Bed,' he ordered, and left the room, almost stumbling against the door-frame. 

*

It was agony to drag himself back to bed, but no help came from Bucky. For a long while, Steve didn't move; rebelliously slumping himself into a ball on the floor of the bathroom, his throat feeling abused and obstructed. 

But the painkillers faded quickly – too quickly – and he knew that he had to move now or he wouldn't be able to move at all. Although healing, the bullet wounds through his body were all points of burning agony, and they shot pain into every part of his body as he dragged himself across the tiled floor of the bathroom and back towards the bed. 

It took him a moment to spot Bucky: he was sitting in the shadow of the couch, on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest and face buried in his folded arms. Steve wasn't sure whether his vision was shifting or whether Bucky was basically vibrating with tremors wracking his whole body. Maybe a bit of both. 

'… Buck?' he rasped, supporting himself against the bathroom door, but got no response. 

At least the pills hadn't really kicked in yet: he was still lucid, if in absolute torturous pain. Although, (he groaned, staggering across to the mattress and lowering himself cautiously down) maybe Bucky was right. Maybe they would make it better. Nausea, disorientation, loss of autonomy – none of those things seemed that bad compared to the full awareness of his situation. 

Of his defeat. 

God, he needed new painkillers. 

'Bucky...?' he ventured again, and this time he saw the other man's shoulders stiffen, saw him pull himself in even tighter. 'I need the painkillers, I can't--'

'Shut up,' Bucky responded, his voice muffled behind his own arms, and maybe the pills were kicking in, because Steve found himself biting his tongue immediately, dropping his head back against the pillows of the bed. They were soft, but he could barely feel any comfort through the spikes of pain through his torso. 

Minutes dragged by, each one achingly, agonizingly slow. Steve gritted his teeth; could feel the drug induced haze between to creep in at the edges of his awareness, although doing almost nothing to combat his pain. Part of him welcomed it: anticipated the escape from his guilt, from the knowledge of his responsibility, of his role in the deaths of millions, of his _friends_. But he also knew he shouldn't, _couldn't_ forget. It wasn't right to just take the easy way out, to surrender himself to an artificial “good”. 

Not that he'd have much choice in the matter.

'Bucky, please,' he tried again. 'Bucky.'

Bucky's metal fist slammed against the floor. 'DON'T CALL ME THAT,' he shouted. The outburst was unexpected, and Steve's pleading words died in his throat. He just stared at Bucky's furious face – his lips had lost all color, going the same hue as his pale cheeks, and his eyes were almost glassy as they glared back. 

'Sorry,' Steve just whispered, curling a little against another spike of agony. 'I need the painkillers back.'

'You think I ever got goddamn painkillers?' Bucky hissed back, and Steve just paused, shaking his head. 

There was uncomfortable silence for a long moment as Steve just gritted his teeth against the pain. He had suffered worse than this, he reminded himself. It wasn't that bad, he had just become dependent, relying on the patches like a crutch. 

Reminding himself of that, it turned out, didn't really help all that much. 

Bucky didn't say anything else, just went back to burying his face in his arms and pulling in ragged breaths. Part of Steve – a constant part that would never be able to watch Bucky in pain without needing to help – desperately wanted to go over there and push himself into Bucky's lap, bury his face in his neck and breath with him until everything was calm again. 

Just as the pills were finally beginning to effect Steve with their insistent tug into that careless haze, a sharp noise rung out through the apartment, and both Steve and Bucky jumped for a moment before he was able to identify the sound. 

It was a phone ringing. 

The ringtone sounded sharp and invasive; foreign as if it didn't belong here. Each intrusive trill grated on Steve's nerves, making his gut twist as Bucky slowly got to his feet, expressionless, and went into the kitchen. Steve had had no idea there was even a phone _in_ this apartment. 

The ringing stopped. There was a moment of silence before he heard Bucky speak, voice flat and emotionless. 

'Yes, sir. There was an incident.' 

There was a brief moment before Bucky padded back into the living room to stand against the wall, eyes trained on him. Apparently he couldn't be trusted to be left out of his line of sight now. 

'I dealt with it,' Bucky said, and then a pause. A sharp: 'No.'

Whatever the voice on the other end of the line said, it made Bucky wince and press his lips together as if the words were a bad taste on his tongue.

'That won't be necessary, he's been subdued.' 

Steve tried to focus properly on Bucky, but the haze of the drugs was starting to make his vision drift and swirl, his body relax against the bed even as concern pounded in his chest. Already the anxiety was starting to feel more distant than personal, though, and Steve desperately tried to cling onto it. He didn't want to give in. _He didn't want to give in_.

Bucky clenched his metal fist against his leg. 'Elimination not required,' he said, a tremor of carefully suppressed emotion under his voice, and then a sharp breath through his teeth and: 'I understand.'

A long pause, and Steve saw Bucky's jaw clench. The light on the ceiling seemed to shift in slow, lazy swaying motions despite being affixed in place. 

' _I understand_ ,' Bucky repeated, and then, inexplicably, dropped to his knees. 'Sorry,' he said, and then a moment of careful silence. 'Yes, I promise.' Another pause, a clarification: 'I promise to be _good_.'

Steve watched as Bucky stayed on his knees, listening for a long while this time. Then just simply: 'Yes.'

He hung up, remaining on his knees for a time, before letting out a steadying breath and getting to his feet. He went into the bathroom without saying a word to Steve, and when he returned he was holding a syringe and the little vial of milky liquid. 

'Gotta put you out for a bit,' he told Steve in a flat voice. 

Steve's eyes followed Bucky's deft, precise movements as he prepped the injection. 'Don't,' he murmured, although he felt the word slurring over his tongue from the drugs, and the objection was weak. 'We bein' watched?' 

'Monitored, yes,' Bucky said, and frowned at Steve. 'Don't fight it,' he added pointedly. 

Steve looked around vaguely, trying to spot any cameras on the bare walls as Bucky cleaned the crook in his elbow and lined up the injection. As always, it was the strange initial feeling of something hard pushing into his blood, and then the dip in his stomach and the sensation of weightless euphoria dragging away the pain. 

It was a feeling of sudden, desperate relief, the induced elation, and Steve just let out a soft, shaking breath and collapsed into the pillows on the bed. Bucky was just staring at him, still tight and tense, but Steve felt his hand duck down to squeeze his own just before he drifted off. 

The last thing Steve said before the darkness swallowed him was: 'Thank you.'

*

Steve became aware of the sharp feeling of stabbing pain in his diaphragm before he even realized he was conscious. He gasped, winced – and slowly dragged his sticky eyes open, feeling disoriented. Morning light had risen. 

'Bucky?' he rasped. 

'I'm right here.'

'Why does it _hurt_?'

'Shh, don't worry, you're fine.'

He didn't feel fine. He glanced down, lifting up the hem of his shirt to his chest. The bandage on his abdomen had been replaced while he was out, and there was already copious amounts of fresh blood staining the white covering. 

'What--?' he asked blearily. Everything was foggy and hazy, but the pain was nonetheless cutting through like a white hot blade. 

Bucky just made a gesture like a finger digging into the wound and twisting. 'I told you,' he said firmly. 'I _told_ you to be good, or they won't let me, have, have--' Bucky sucked in a deep breath. 

And then suddenly his shoulders were shaking, had face turned down and his hands coming out to grip the blankets next to Steve, knuckles going white. 

'Please,' he choked out, and Steve registered foggily that he was crying. Something twisted in his chest, beyond simply the agony, and he weakly felt out with his hand to take Bucky's in his own. 

'I'm sorry,' Steve said, and it was true. Bucky had been right: the pills made it easier – he didn't have to think about everything that had gone wrong. He should have just taken them, stayed ignorant, stayed compliant. Not had to know, not had to feel this _agony_ \- the agony beyond just the physical. That didn't matter. It hurt, sure, but physical hurt he could deal with. He couldn't deal with the knowledge that he was the reason this many people were dead. The reason his small handful of friends were dead. 

Bucky looked up at him. 'You have to,' he begged, not even hiding the desperation in his tone. 'You have to be good, you can't do this to me again. You have to be good or they'll order me to elimi-- you have to, you _have to_.'

'I will, Buck,' Steve promised. 'Not again, I swear.'

Bucky nodded, dashing tears away from his bed and came up to kneel beside Steve on the mattress, carefully not touching his injured torso. 'I can't lose you,' he insisted, taking Steve's face in his hands; one warm, one cool. 'I can't, don't make me.'

'No, no, I'm with you,' Steve replied, stumbling the words sincerely over his clumsy tongue. 'Right here. End of, end of the line, Buck.'

Bucky let out one more harsh sob, and suddenly fell forward, capturing Steve's lips with his own. It came as a surprise, and Steve was far too gone to object or even really respond, but he let his body go pliant, let his mouth open and go slack as Bucky kissed deeply into him. 

After a long moment, he pulled away. ' _Steve_ ,' he whispered, and kissed him again: closed mouth and short. 'I'll get you the painkillers, stay still. I'll, I'll be right back.'


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky fixed the new transdermal patch on Steve's arm with shaking fingers, not meeting his eyes. His face was drawn, lips tight at the corners and shaping unhappily around unspoken words, and once the patch was in place and the painkillers kicking in, he just looked down at the sheets somewhere around Steve's knees and said: 'That better?'

Steve knew he should be upset with Bucky. He could almost still feel that metal hand pressing hard over his mouth, the choking, retching feeling of the pills going down dry. The painkillers were fast acting, already dulling the aching, piercing sensation in this stomach. Bucky had hurt him, but then, Steve had hurt Bucky too: he had disobeyed him. 

The foggy haze of the drugs that usually crumbled clarity down like plaster in an earthquake, for once, offered this one piece of perspicuity: Bucky had been trying to help him. He had been trying to protect him. He had warned him what would happen if Steve transgressed, and Steve had disregarded his words, and rebelled anyway. Steve had been wrong. Bucky had been right. Just this once, Steve was thankful to the pills, because they made so, so much simpler. It would have been better, it would have been _easier_ if Steve had just taken the damn tablets. 

He wouldn't have to know what he knew now. He wouldn't have to face his own guilt. 

Well, he wouldn't be making that mistake again. And he couldn't be sore at Bucky about it. 

Besides; besides everything. Bucky was just as much of a victim as Steve was. That was clear enough. Hell, he was more, because Steve wasn't even really a victim. Not when Bucky was just trying to _help_. 

Steve told himself this, the thoughts murmuring just behind his lips, and out loud he said: 'Much better, Buck.' And because he didn't know what else to do to make Bucky get that he _understood_ now, that he'd be good, he reached up with clumsy hands and pulled Bucky forward to press his lips ineptly to Bucky's jaw, just shy of brushing his lips.

Bucky pulled away; but smoothed his fingers through the hair at Steve's temple, thumb brushing over the outline of his ear. It felt fuzzy and distant. 

Time once again was no longer making itself a pressing concern in Steve's consciousness, but he did notice that the sun rose high in the sky (searing golden light through the thin blinds and making him blink) before Bucky approached him again, and then it was only to give Steve a bowl of food and a tall glass of water, before slipping away. 

Steve watched as Bucky curled himself back up on the floor by the arm of the sofa, knees drawn to his chest and fingers clenching into the denim of his jeans. 

He tried his name several times, but received no response. Steve ate, and slowly, the sun lowered until it was nothing but a lilac glow glinting off the spires of the buildings of New York that Steve could just glimpse from the bed. 

At dinner time, Bucky got up and disappeared into the kitchen, moving like a spooked animal. 

'Bucky,' Steve tried again, as he heard the microwave door opening and the soft beeps of buttons being pressed. It started humming, and Bucky returned to clear away the plates from Steve's lunch. 

'… You didn't drink all the water,' Bucky replied faintly, furrowing his brows at the glass. There was one small mouthful left. There was something slightly distant in his tone, like he was speaking from somewhere else. His words tremored just slightly at the back of his throat, but he held out the glass to Steve again, watched carefully as he drank that last room temperature swallow down. 'Good,' he said. 'Good.' 

'Are you with me, Bucky?' Steve mumbled as he handed back the cup, concerned – but the words were inarticulate, ineloquent. He wasn't even quite sure what he was asking; just that Bucky seemed to be somewhere else, something thrumming under his skin but nothing on the surface. 

The microwave beeped, and Bucky jumped. 

'Yeah,' he said, 'Yeah, I...' 

His hand came up to rub over his mouth, the metal one clenched so tight on the glass that Steve was scared it would break. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen, returning several minutes later with a bowl full of pre-prepared rice and chicken that smelled faintly of plastic and burnt broccoli. There was no broccoli to be seen in the bowl.

The pills were on the tray Bucky was carrying, with another glass of water. 

Bucky sat down, and picked the pills up like they were tiny, delicate bombs that could go off at too firm a touch. He didn't immediately give them to Steve. 

'Here.' Holding out his hand, Steve nodded at Bucky. 'Give them here.' 

'You gotta take 'em,' Bucky said firmly, as if Steve hadn't just asked for them, as if he was arguing. 

'I know. I want them.' 

Bucky's distant eyes, flicked to the door, then locked on Steve's face. 'Yeah?' 

'Yeah.' Steve shrugged. 'I don't wanna feel like –' He took a breath. 'I don't wanna feel.' 

Relief washed over Bucky's face, and he held out his hand for Steve to pick up the tablets. He did, swallowing them down greedily. 

*

It was night time outside, but the room was still bright from the iridescent light overhead. Bucky looked to be asleep, sitting on the floor next to the couch, his head resting on the cushions and hair falling messily over his face. 

Steve sat up in bed, watching the steady rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. It was good that he was sleeping. He had been distant and unusually disassociated all day, saying as many words to Steve as could be counted on fingers; so passing out, Steve thought, was probably for the best. 

He wished he could sleep too, but despite the drowsiness from the pills, he just felt too cold and lonely on the bed. The feeling of isolation was in his chest like sickness, like the nausea that made his bones sway under his skin and made his vision drift and lurch. Shifting down on the bed, Steve tried to grab the pillow, tried to bury his face in it and close his eyes, but the darkness only served to narrow everything down to just him – his body, on this bed. 

He wished for Peggy. As heartbreaking as it was to see her so frail these days, all he could think was that it would be nice to have her lying on the bed beside him, her breaths – reedy from age and illness – warm on his face. He could almost imagine it, could almost feel her body indenting the cushions beside him, making the bed dip just slightly. But when he reached out his hand to feel for hers, there was nothing there, and his stomach just lurched all the more. 

Steve let out a muffled noise of pain into the pillow, and heard Bucky shift on the floor on the other side of the room. 

Technically, he supposed, he _wasn't_ alone. But why did Bucky have to be all the way over _there_. 

Steve rolled onto his back. He wasn't sure why it was, but the drugs seemed to be affecting him differently now – less confusion, more despondency. Maybe it was because of his shift in mood, maybe it was because of the brief flirtation with withdrawal. He still felt dizzy, pliant, timeless. But it wasn't enough to drag him fully away. 

He wondered, if he asked, whether Bucky would give him more. 

Steve sighed and sat up, vision swaying with the movement. Maybe he could _find_ more of the pills. They would be in one of the bathroom cupboards. He didn't know what they were called, but...

No. That was probably a bad idea. 

'… doing, Steve?'

Steve blinked. 

'Huh?'

'What're you doing?'

Bucky voice was hoarse, and when Steve looked over he just saw blue eyes blinking at him from behind the curtain of hair. 

'Go back to sleep Buck, I'm just...'

A sudden look of distraught desperation crossed Bucky's face, and he shifted so he was facing Steve properly. 'Don't,' he just said. 'Stay where you are.'

Steve didn't move from the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumping. Something twinged in his abdomen, the wounds on his torso feeling... hollow, if not painful. He mumbled, 'I don't feel the same.'

Bucky ran a hand through his hair. 'How?'

'The pills aren't working right, Buck. They're, I feel-- I think I need more?'

Bucky made a choked off, unhappy noise. 'No, lie back down,' he insisted. 'You don't want that. I won't do that.' His voice quavered just slightly, and then Steve caught the sound of a sob, trapped in the back of Bucky's throat and swallowed down. ' _Don't_ make me be--'

Bucky buried his face in his hands, and for some reason (in Steve's foggy brain), it meant that as long as he couldn't see him, Steve was alright to disobey and get up. 

He just needed to be closer to Bucky anyway. That was Allowed, right?

On unsteady feet, he stumbled his way over to the other side of the room to stand over Bucky, swaying. 'Hey,' he said. 'Hey, Bucky, it's alright.'

'I told you to lie down,' he replied, but he said it weakly, still muffled behind his hands before he looked up at Steve with wet eyes. 

'I'll lie down if you come and sleep on the bed,' Steve offered, and Bucky shook his head. 

'Shouldn't be near you,' he choked out. 'I hurt you, Steve. I, I... I didn't want to have to do that, but you made me, you _made_ \--'

'Hey, its okay.' Steve brought his hand down to stroke through Bucky's hair, and felt him lean into the touch, still sobbing. 'It was my fault.'

Bucky shook his head fervently. 'No, it's _their--_ ' he started, then forcibly cut himself off, tugging on his hair hard, his fingers nearly twining with Steve's as he did so. He swore at himself under his breath, then pushed himself up onto his knees to bury his face into the shape of Steve's thigh. His fingers moved to grip desperately onto the fabric of his pajama bottoms. 

It was awful to see Bucky torn up like this, but something swelled through Steve, grateful for the touch. Bucky's tears were wet against his skin, soaking through. 

'….what it's like to overdose on th-- them,' Bucky was gritting out, and Steve swayed slightly as he looked down, went back to stroking through his hair as soothingly as he could. 'Don't make me do that to you, they'd do it when I was, when I was-- so you gotta be good, Steve. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for before. You took 'em so good with dinner, can you always do that? Don't make me, just don't make me hurt you. I don't wanna to you what they to--' His lips twisted against the words, sealed off, and then he was just crying, bawling helplessly. 

The sound was gut wrenching to Steve, an he dropped to his knees, letting Bucky move so he was instead crying into his shoulder and clutching at his back. 

At least Bucky was here in the present now, he thought vaguely. 

'Sorry,' he murmured into Bucky's hair. 'I'm sorry. You don't have to do anything, I'll just take 'em when you give them to me, yeah?'

Bucky nodded in the crook of his shoulder. 'You shouldn't forgive me,' he mumbled, the words rumbling into Steve's skin. 

'Don't be dumb,' Steve said, and then tugged at Bucky gently. 'Come on. Back to bed. Put me to bed, Buck, 'n stay with me, okay?'

Bucky sniffled, hummed something affirmative sounding. His fingers clutched tighter at Steve's shoulders. 

*

Steve woke the next morning to Bucky cautiously pressing kisses into the hollow of his neck. 

'What, what are you doing?' he asked blearily to the white paint of the ceiling. 

'Wanted to say sorry is all,' Bucky replied, brushing his lips over Steve's pulse point. 'Going to make it up. Make you feel good.'

Steve shivered at the contact, but grimaced. 'Bucky, we... we've never...'

Bucky glanced up, and – straining his neck to peer down at him – Steve could see a look of confusion pass over his face. 'But, before I was theirs, I was yours, wasn't I?'

The words rattled through Steve – the implication of possession, ownership. 'You really don't remember, do you?'

Bucky just scowled and went back to peppering kisses over Steve's neck. 'Don't need to remember, Steve. Not important.'

'Of course it's important!'

'Nope,' Bucky insisted, and Steve couldn't help but let out a short, dry laugh. 

'No, really, Bucky,' he said, as Bucky's human fingers began to push up at the hem of his t shirt and stroke gently over the uninjured parts of his torso. 'Bucky, _stop_.'

Bucky sucked gently on the skin just over the ridge of Steve's clavicle, and murmured, 'Not gonna hurt you.'

'Kinda got that impression,' Steve said, and couldn't help the hitch to his breath as Bucky shifted up and began to draw a firm love bite just below his jaw. The sensation was distant and muted, almost a little ticklish. 'But hey, look at me, please?'

With an annoyed huff, Bucky pulled away from Steve's neck with a faint _pop_ and pushed himself up on his elbow to look him in the eyes, other fingers still dancing over his stomach. 

'Why are you doing this?' Steve asked. 

Bucky looked confused. 'It's not for me,' he just said pointedly. 'I'm not going to, uh. I just want to--' 

'You _do_ want to?' 

Bucky repeated, a little tightly, 'It's not for _me_.'

'...Am I allowed to say no?' Steve asked, and Bucky thought for a moment. 

'Yeah,' he said finally. 'I don't-- But yeah.' 

Steve hesitated, unsure. He didn't know where this had come from, didn't know where the kiss the other day had come from. They had never done such things in the past – why now? Bucky couldn't remember their past, Steve knew that, and he assumed that he had _belonged_ to Steve before HYDRA? Steve shuddered. What did that say about Bucky initiating this sort of contact?

But at the same time, Steve did not want to say no. Right now, all he wanted to do was please Bucky, show that he could – _would_ – be good. 

'Come up here,' he just said, plucking at the collar of Bucky's shirt to encourage him to come level with him. Bucky had a flicker to his eyes like light catching just in ones peripheral vision; it was hard to catch, but it was there. Hesitation. Vulnerability. 

Steve didn't know what to do. He didn't know what this was. So he just said, 'Come here,' again, and kissed Bucky. He pulled him down until their lips brushed, slow and gentle, and Bucky sighed into his mouth. He tasted of salt and sleep. 

The thing was, more than anything else, Steve was desperate for contact. It felt like an artificial need – not something arising from within his own desires, but from something swallowed down his throat, a little seed of loneliness planted by a dependency. A dependency on the pills or on Bucky, he couldn't be sure. He was undoubtedly reliant upon both. 

It was easy, like they had always done this, but then, a lot of things were easy. Steve felt like water, just giving way and flowing with whatever shape Bucky poured him into. That didn't exactly feel like something he had always done. But still. It was easy. 

Bucky licked into his mouth, melted against his body. His hands moved so that he was caressing Steve's jaw, so that his fingertips were rubbing slow, smooth circles in the little dip behind his ear. Steve felt a shiver of sensation trickle down his spine, and threaded his hands into Bucky's hair. So straightforward, just to kiss. Time still meant very little to Steve, and he felt like he could just do this for, if not forever, a very long while indeed. Bucky was warm where he was half lying on top of him, holding his weight up just enough not to aggravate Steve's wounds. 

Then slowly, Bucky's flesh and blood hand began its journey back down Steve's body. 

'Buck,' Steve started, hesitantly, but Bucky simply kissed deeper into his mouth. 

'Just relax,' he murmured as he pulled back, as his fingers reached the waist band of Steve's soft, cotton bottoms, as he took Steve's lower lip between his own and sucked gently, tugging just slightly with his teeth. 

Steve moaned. He wasn't hard, but there was the pleasurable tingle of sensation radiating through his body, melting through his lax limbs. 

Bucky's hand slipped inside Steve's pants, and began to knead gently at his soft cock. Steve arched up into the touch. 'I'm not sure,' he murmured into Bucky's mouth. 'Not sure I can get...'

'Don't worry, 's fine.' Bucky's hand moved over the shape of Steve's cock, tugging just a little at the foreskin and thumb sliding smoothly over his flaccid length. He shifted a little and pressed a kiss to Steve's cheekbone, voice coming out a low, unfamiliar rumble. 'You're doin' fine.'

Steve could feel heat pooling in his body (melting through the ice-cold feeling of isolation that had taken up residence in his spine), but very little of it was making its way to his dick. He could feel himself swelling slightly, hardening slightly, could feel the pleasure snaking into him. But it was all muted and fragile, on a precipice of slipping away again. 

It didn't matter, though. Bucky was flush beside him; pressed to him; massaging him slowly, deliberately. His breaths were damp warmth against Steve's mouth and skin, and it was so, so different from the feeling of Bucky pushing him down against cold tiles and smothering his mouth and nose with his wintry, unforgiving metal hand, that it could almost chase those memories away in their entirety. 

Steve brought his hands down from where they were tangled in Bucky's hair to rest on his neck and shoulders, thumb stroking on the ridges in his spine. 'Buck,' he gasped out, the word almost immediately swallowed by a warm kiss. 'Can I touch you?'

It was almost automatic – It wasn't asking verification, it wasn't just checking in. It was asking _permission_ , though it came unnaturally to Steve and sat strange on his tongue. But it was automatic, conditioned into him by Bucky: who, in this instance, just shook his head, nose brushing against Steve's hot skin. 

He muttered, 'Why would you want to?' and dismissed Steve with a particularly firm tug on his slowly hardening cock. Steve's back arched a little, writhing against the intense stimulation. 

'Both of us,' Steve managed to gasp out between his teeth. It was an odd feeling, Bucky pulling on his dick, kneading him in a way that should, would be getting him hard – but he just couldn't get there, like the blood in his body didn't know where it was meant to be headed and was pounding in his ears instead. He fumbled to tug at Bucky until they were kissing again, and murmured into his mouth, 'It can be good for both of us, Buck. Reciprocity, y'know?' 

But Bucky frowned against his mouth, and shook his head again. 'Mm, no,' he hummed. 'Don't have to do that, Stevie.' The nickname slipped out in a low murmur and settled warmly in Steve's stomach. Bucky's lips slipped a little to the side of his mouth, a clumsy kiss halfway to his cheek. The ghost of lips against faint, fair stubble. 'Not going to take advantage.'

That was a strange way of looking at it, Steve thought, but he didn't press. Couldn't press Bucky. Take what he's given, only what he's given. 

His dick was finally starting to swell with blood, the pleasure spiking through him more acutely. It seemed to flicker through his whole body, to that Bucky sucking and nipping softly at his jaw was almost as much of a sharp sting of pleasure as the feeling of Bucky's hand wrapped around his cock, stroking him steadily, thumb running over the head dryly. 

'A-ah,' Steve breathed out brokenly as Bucky dipped down to suck firmly on his neck, and his hips pushed up off the mattress. A sudden spike of sensation in one of his bullet wounds had him hissing in surprise, and Bucky's lips came back up to meet his own along with soft murmured warnings to stay still. 

'Can't go hurting yourself,' Bucky said between kisses. 'Just stay still, huh? Lemme take care of you, Stevie.'

Steve nodded, basking in the sensation. 'You always d--' he started, before his words were twisted in his throat by a low groan. It wasn't even getting off that mattered to Steve right now, but simply the sensation of touch, of closeness, chasing away everything else. It warmed to his bones, leaving no chill of loneliness behind. 

Melting into the sensation, Steve let his head loll back and caught Bucky's eyes. They were clear and concentrated, but once he caught Steve looking, he seemed to forget his apparent quest to suck and kiss at Steve's jaw and neck until it was just a mess of flushed bruises. 

'Hey,' Steve murmured, and the corner of Bucky's lip quirked up in surprise, and he let out a short sound of amusement. There was still something slightly strange, almost mechanical, about his demeanor, but the laugh seemed to crack at it a little bit, and when Bucky leaned down to capture Steve's lips again, Steve just let his eyes drift closed and get lost in the feeling. 

Bucky touched him with measured patience for what seemed like an eternity as a frayed string of tension began to build in Steve's body, and gasps began to shape themselves in his mouth. Any sort of completion still seemed far off, vague like a mirage in the distance, but that was okay. Bucky was kissing him like it mattered, like he wanted to be kissing him, and Steve just let himself drift on the sensation of being wanted, thinking that everything might be okay if he could just let himself melt into Bucky, have Bucky seep in under his skin like shallow heat, like a second heartbeat. 

Everything might be okay if he didn't have to exist, if he could just surrender himself to Bucky, surrender himself to _this_. 

With slightly shaking hands, he fumbled to pull Bucky even closer against him, being rewarded with a sudden exhalation of breath into his mouth as Bucky's own erection nudged against his thigh. Steve opened his eyes to look at Bucky, only scant millimeters away, and there was something shocked, almost panicked in his eyes. 

Bucky tried to draw back, but Steve whined, looking back imploringly, and slid his hands down the cloth of Bucky's t-shirt, tight over his firm back, until he was pulling him even more flush against him, hands pressed to the dip just above his ass. _Stay with me_ , he begged silently. It was everything, _everything_ to not be alone.

With a low groan, Bucky buried his head into Steve's neck and panted wetly as he let himself thrust his hips against Steve's thigh. 'Fuck,' he gasped out, the rhythm he'd built up as he stroked Steve faltering for a moment. 

Against the skin of his neck, Steve could feel Bucky's face scrunching up as he grimaced and forced himself to stop the canting movement of his hips. Forgetting entirely about Bucky's refusal to allow him to touch, Steve shifted a little so that he could press his palm to Bucky's erection through the denim of his pants. It was rough, and constricted, but he could feel the warmth of Bucky's dick through the jeans, feel it throb as he rubbed experimentally. 

'Shit,' Bucky groaned, pushing forward into his palm. 'N-- no.' 

Again, he pulled away, and Steve almost keened in frustration, needing that closeness, that connection. 'Bucky--' he started, but before he knew it, Bucky was pushing into his palm again, his metal hand moving to grip Steve's hand flush against his erection even though he would happily do so willingly. 

He didn't let go, the cool pressure of the metal around Steve's wrist, rubbing almost the wrong side of comfortable at his bones, and stammered slightly brokenly, 'Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,' as he began to thrust with intent into Steve's palm, clearly chasing pleasure. 

With his free hand, Steve threaded his fingers through Bucky's hair again, gently tilting his head up to look at him again, and kissed him deeply. 'It's good,' Steve said into his mouth, squeezing his hand on Bucky's hard on. 'So good. You're good, we-- we're good.'

Bucky laughed, voice cracking hysterically, but loosened his grip on Steve's wrist. 'Sorry,' he said again, like a broken record, as he rutted helplessly into Steve's hand. 

His own cock going soft again from the drugs, Steve contented himself to kiss Bucky, to taste every strange little sound of startled pleasure coming out of his mouth. It still felt good to have Bucky massaging arrhythmically at his nearly flaccid dick, but not as good – not as important – as the feeling of having him falling apart beside him. 

The sound Bucky made when he came was just a low, slightly pained mewl, and it sent pleasure spiking through Steve's body. He could feel warmth spreading out through Bucky's jeans, could feel his cock throbbing and pulsing, and Bucky's grip on his cock stuttered and then tightened. 

It surprised Steve when he followed suit, a strange swell of uncomfortable, unfamiliar pleasure burning through him. He gasped out a wordless noise as Bucky gently squeezed his foreskin over the sensitive head of his cock, come leaking out over his fingers, and his whole body seemed to simply tremor for a moment, his heart pounding. 

It took a moment for Steve to quieten the deafening drumming in his ears and think over the rush of blood, but when he looked at Bucky, he was surprised to see him looking away over at the corner of the room, his eyes distant and glassy even as his body seemed to thrum with post-orgasmic aftershocks. 

'… You okay?' he asked, after a moment, and thankfully Bucky snapped back to him in the blink of an eye. 

Quietly, he answered: 'I was never allowed to, to finish.'

Steve didn't know what to say to that. It rung in his ears and twisted in his stomach, a feeling of sick concern. Possibly against his better judgment, the first thing to come out of his mouth was just a blithely mumbled, 'I've spent nights in the bed across the room from you that say otherwise.'

Thankfully, Bucky snorted out a laugh in shocked surprise, and looked at Steve as if he was a revelation. 'Was it different before?' he asked, as if it hadn't occurred to him until that moment.

Steve nodded. 'Yeah, Buck, real different,' he replied, and slipped his arm around Bucky's shoulders to pull him closer. Quiet and thoughtful, Bucky buried himself in Steve's side, brows knitting together. 

They didn't get out of bed for a long while, not until Steve stomach began to growl insistently with hunger and Bucky pushed himself to his feet with a groan, moving awkwardly towards the shower, already unbuttoning his jeans to strip them off.


	8. Chapter 8

Steve could tell time was easing by. He could tell it from the way the sun was glaring warmer and higher through the blinds every day, and the temperature of the room was beginning to prickle sweat onto both he and Bucky's skin. He could tell it by how his wounds were starting to heal properly, and how Bucky had ultimately switched the transdermal pain relief for extra tablets with breakfast and dinner. 

There were upsides and downsides. On the one hand, it turned out that his confusion, nausea and disorientation weren't solely attributable to the Benzo-like tablets, and the long term removal of the patches actually helped to clear his head a bit. Not entirely, not by any means, and it did shit all for his susceptibility and pliability, which were still in full force. But the world was a little sharper, a little starker, and it was nice. Like cleaning a window you didn't even realize had gotten so smudged and grimy. 

Being off the most heavy-duty painkillers also meant that he had a bit more perception of his own body. The transdermal patches hadn't just provided relief – they had positively masked any and all recognition of the state of his own injuries. Nothing, _nothing_ but the vaguest of those sensations got through that barrier. 

His new painkillers were just gentle padding where the old had been a solid, impenetrable wall. On the one hand, it was good to actually be able to feel when he maybe pushed himself too hard sitting up quickly or moving from one room to another, rather than just staggering recklessly and blissfully ignorant until he was tearing open healing flesh. On the other hand, however, he was actually _in pain_ now. 

But that was okay. Steve could deal with pain. It was almost a relief – a good distraction from any increased guilt arising from his sharper clarity. That was the problem with the clean window. He wasn't sure he could handle seeing what was on the other side. 

So he tried not to look. 

It was nice enough in here. The sun was coming inside in thick, golden slats. The radio was on, and he could hear Bucky shuffling around tidying the kitchen. Occasionally he would lean out and look around the corner to check on Steve, quite unnecessarily. Bucky was shirtless, glistening with just a faint sheen of sweat, and rubber gloves on both hands that he wore as he scrubbed at the kitchen counters. 

Steve was warm too, the pajama pants at the back of his knees sticking damply to his skin and the bed hot like a furnace even though he had kicked off all the sheets and discarded his own shirt. The air was sticky and thick like syrup, sweltering and uncomfortable. Bucky was grunting with annoyance as he cleaned the stove top in the kitchen, and it made Steve fondly amused. Bucky had never _liked_ cleaning, but he had always preferred everything _clean_. It was an everlasting internal tension. 

Steve shifted carefully on the bed, trying to find a cool patch of mattress and not aggravate his healing wounds. After a moment he sighed, unable to get comfortable, and called out, 'Buck?' 

Bucky leaned around the corner from the kitchen to look at him, spray bottle and microfiber cloth in hand, pushing his sweaty hair back off his face with his forearm. 'Huh?' 

'Can I take a shower?' He sat up carefully as he asked the question, hollow, deep pain spiking in his abdomen, but he just pressed a hand gently over his wound and grinned crookedly at Bucky. 'It's real hot.' 

Bucky nodded. 'Just gimme a few more minutes, I'll finish cleaning, and we'll take one,' he replied, and turned back towards the kitchen. 

Steve cleared his throat, shuffling across the bed so that his legs hung off the side of the bed. 'No, I mean, I can take it on my own.' 

Bucky's demeanor changed immediately, subtly. His shoulders straightened and he turned around, the cloth held just a little tighter in his fist. 'I don't think that's a great idea,' he said levelly. 'You might hurt yourself.' 

Steve just laughed, and immediately regretted it as the feeling spiked a painful ache in his stomach. 'Ah-- No, look, I'm fine, Buck.' 

'You just hurt yourself laughing,' Bucky pointed out, gesturing incredulously with the spray bottle. 

It was a fair point. Steve shrugged and grinned. 'I'm sure the shower will be a riot,' he replied, rolling his eyes. 'Really. I'll be okay. It's not like there's a lock on the door, you can rush in if need be.' 

Lips twisting a little bit, tightening at the corners, Bucky just shrugged. But he tossed the cloth back onto the bench and pushed his hair back properly with his gloved hand, expression relaxing a little after a moment. Seemingly mollified, he wandered back into the kitchen. 'Yeah, alright,' he called over his shoulder. 'Be careful.' 

'It's just a shower.' Steve pushed himself to his feet, carefully stretching. 'I think I can manage.' 

From the kitchen, the spray bottle huffed dispassionately. Bucky made a sound in the back of his throat that might have been a chuckle. 'Okay.' 

A few minutes later, Steve was carefully peeling off his sweats and climbing under the cool spray of water with a sigh. He felt kinda guilty, increasingly, whenever he wanted to do something without Bucky. There wasn't exactly a lot of room for alone time in their little apartment. He didn't need a lot of it, and he appreciated Bucky's concern. But at the same time... It was nice to shower by himself sometimes. 

It was pleasant to let the lukewarm water wash away the sweltering heat of the day. To slowly relax without a constant gaze on him and just enjoy the solitude, just for a little while. Tenderly he washed his body down, careful not to soak the recently replaced bandaging on his torso, and closed his eyes, tilting his head back under the spray. 

He didn't stay in the shower for too long. There was no real need to. Once he was cool and clean, he turned off the shower-head and stepped out of the glass cubicle, reaching for a towel on the hook next to the shower. 

To his surprise, he could hear Bucky's voice carrying through the wall. 

For a short moment, he though what he was hearing might be Bucky singing along to the radio, and he nearly smiled. Once upon a time Bucky singing along with Vera Lynn while he tidied the house was a common staple of their life, but it had been a long, long time since he last heard Bucky's (mostly tone deaf) voice. But it only took a second to realize this wasn't _that_. 

Bucky was talking to someone. There was no answering voice, so he must be on the phone. Steve couldn't make out the words, but he could hear Bucky's tone – flat and measured. After a few more short exchanges, the talking stopped and Steve heard the phone being thrown back onto the counter. Bucky's quiet footsteps on the kitchen tiles echoed from the next room. 

Steve slung the towel around his hips, not too surprised when Bucky opened the door without knocking and walked straight into the room and to the medicine cabinet. 'Gotta get into bed, Steve,' he said, gesturing with his head towards the door.

Steve raised his eyebrows. 'I was hoping you might help me get rid of this, quickly,' he replied, scrubbing a hand over the stubble growing on his chin. 

Bucky glanced over and pulled out one of the little vials of milky liquid. _Oh_. 'Later, alright?' he said, pulling on clean gloves. 'I'll help you shave this evening. Sorry, they didn't gimme much of a heads up, pal. Gotta get you under before someone gets here.'

'What?' Steve asked, as Bucky gestured again for him to move. Obediently, he stepped towards the door, taking a short moment to come up behind Bucky and press a warm kiss onto his sweat damp shoulder. 'Hey, what's happening? Who's coming here?'

Bucky just shook his head, and turned head head to catch Steve's lips briefly. 'Handlers,' he answered. 'Quick, into bed. Go. No more questions.'

Steve went into the living room, climbed back onto the still warm mattress. 'I can stay awake,' he offered. 'I'll stay still, stay right here. I'll be good, Buck, you know I will.'

Bucky snorted. 'As if,' he said, attaching the vial to the syringe. 'Anyway, 's not allowed. They want you subdued, so I gotta subdue you. Rules, buddy.'

Steve frowned as he settled against the pillows, trying to get comfortable. Belatedly, he realized with a squirming feeling of surprised discomfort that he was once again naked, going to be vulnerable and exposed in front of who knows – but Bucky was already pulling the blankets up from their rumpled pile at the bottom of the bed to sit over Steve's hips. 'Who's rules?' he asked. 'Yours or theirs?'

'Theirs, of course.' Bucky tore open a little packet with his teeth, and bent over to clean the crook in Steve's arm with the alcohol wipe. With almost no warning, he surprised Steve by piercing his skin immediately, letting the viscous liquid seep into his veins. Steve hissed. 'Hurts?'

'More without the painkillers,' Steve said, although the brief sting was already fading, replaced instead by that hard, distinctive push in his blood. His blood seemed to slow down for a moment in its steady push through his body, and his stomach dipped familiarly. 

Bucky pulled out the syringe. 'You're still on pain relief, dummy.'

As always, Steve felt the sudden surge of easygoing elation surge through his body as the substance began to really take effect. He grinned, reaching out with blurry movements to pull at Bucky's sleeve, try to tug him closer. Bucky huffed, in the middle of trying to carefully dispose of the syringe, and batted Steve away. But after a moment, he had the needle safety out of reach and was pulling off his gloves. 

'When you start insulting me so much?' Steve asked, mock petulantly. He could hear his own voice slurring a little in his ears as the room started to smudge and slow down. Bucky, however, was climbing up onto the bed to kneel next to him, warm and cool hands both stroking through his hair. 

He leaned forward to press his lips to an indistinct part of Steve's face as his eyes drifted shut. Maybe his forehead, maybe his cheek. Didn't matter. His lips were soft, kind and distant. Steve sighed. 'Only when you're being a dummy,' Bucky teased, and Steve just grinned wider. 

'See you soon?' he mumbled, and Bucky kissed him again. 

'Yeah.'

''Kay.' Steve drew in a breath through his nose, melting into warm oblivion. 'Don't do anything stupid while I'm...'

The darkness swallowed his trailing words.

*

When Steve woke up again, it was to the confusing sensation of being sticky from the thick, heavy heat in the air, and shivering with chemical cold. 

Bucky was there beside him, propped up against the headboard of the bed, one hand curled to the back of Steve's neck, rubbing slow circles into his skin. Steve twisted his neck to look up at him properly, and the corner of Bucky's eyes crinkled. He was drinking from one of their mugs, and once he'd swallowed he held it out for Steve to take with shaky hands. 'Hey,' he murmured, 'you're awake.'

Steve held the warm cup in both hands, shuffling up the bed a little to sit up, ignoring the twinging in his stomach. He looked down into the milky liquid. It just looked like plain tea, the bag still sitting in the mug. Steve smiled against the chills, and took a sip, careful not to spill the drink. 

It warmed him almost immediately. Tea was a funny thing – both of them, Bucky and himself, tended to prefer coffee – but coming from an Irish home, Steve's mother had always insisted on a pot in the evenings, so the drink always reminded him of childhood, and of family. 

He glanced up at Bucky as the chills faded. 'Everything okay?' he asked, and Bucky just nodded. There was the slightest tension to his expression, but it was nothing like either of the other times he had put Steve out so one of the HYDRA drones could stop by. 

He ruffled Steve's hair. 'Just supplies,' he explained. 'Drink up.'

Steve tried to, but nearly choked on a mouthful of tea as he snorted. 

'What's so funny?' Bucky asked, but he was grinning, moving his arm from Steve's neck to poke him in the ribcage. It stung a little bit, but he just laughed breathlessly, squirming a little. 

'Nothing, jerk,' he chuckled, trying to hold the mug up and stop the tea spilling as Bucky drew back. 'It's just rich that there's someone with HYDRA who's job it is to bring us groceries.'

Bucky's lips curled up at the edges, and Steve could tell he was fighting back a grin. 'Everyone has their place,' he reasoned, still smirking. 'Their place isn't to _bring us groceries_ , it's to maintain the asset.'

Steve swallowed down another mouthful of tea, the tremoring in his hands finally dying down. 'By bringing the asset groceries,' he pointed out. 

Bucky shrugged, and shifted off the edge of the bed to stand and stretch. 'Well, sometimes.' He glanced over towards the door, a thoughtful expression on his face. He seemed to be unconsciously clenching and unclenching his metal fist, shifting the plating on his arm. 'Y'know, they think I'm too easy on you.'

Steve's mouth tightened. 'Oh?'

'Yeah, they don't like it.' Rolling his shoulder so that the plating settled, Bucky sighed. 'What do you want for dinner?'

Steve's eyes narrowed. 'Maybe you shouldn't ask me a question like that,' he suggested. 'Maybe that'd make them _happy_.'

Bucky just cocked his head to the side. 'You are mine to keep as I please,' he said pointedly. 'That's what they said when they gave you to me.'

'Well obviously not,' Steve retaliated, rolling his eyes. 'Since their rules come first.'

'Of course their orders take priority,' Bucky said, something dark rising in his eyes, creeping like smoke. He was standing stock still now, staring at Steve on the bed almost in disbelief. 'What point are you trying to make here, Steve?' 

Steve wasn't sure exactly. Just that, things were _good_ between Bucky and himself at the moment. There had been no repeat of the pill incident, Steve had kept to his word and was behaving. He always dropped lines of questioning when Bucky told him to, he always asked permission before getting himself a glass of water or something to eat, before turning on the radio, before taking a shower. He knew where Bucky's lines were and he didn't cross them. He took what he was given, be it medicine or injections or physical affection, whenever he was given it. He was always _good_. 

And Bucky, well. Bucky kept him in line. He kept Steve from lingering on what he had, _what had happened_. He kept Steve in the moment. He controlled everything in the little space they shared, and everything was ordered, and neat, and peaceful because of _Bucky_. 

Suddenly Steve was just furious that anyone would tell Bucky he was doing wrong. And furious that Bucky would listen to them. 

'So what are you going to do, huh, Buck?' he snapped, gesturing with the half empty mug. 'Have I done anything _wrong_? Anything at all?'

Bucky raised an eyebrow. 'You're questioning me right now,' he said in a voice so even and measured that Steve couldn't help a shiver of alarm go down his spine. Bucky _never_ spoke like that. He would go expressionless, sometimes. Sometimes for hours on end. But when he was blank like that, that's all it was – a blankness, hiding an uncontrollable feeling of trembling emotion underneath: emotion that Steve was pretty sure even Bucky didn't know he was experiencing. 

This wasn't expressionless. This was calm. This was the still sea before a crashing wave. 

'Well, good,' Steve said, undeterred. 'Punish me then. Make them proud.'

Suddenly Bucky was surging towards him, plates in his arm shifting again, the swell of a wave. ' _That's enough!_ ' he snapped as he climbed onto the bed and gripped his metal fingers in Steve's short hair, plating catching against his scalp. 

He pulled Steve's head back, and with a gasp Steve let his neck be tugged back so that he was looking up at the ceiling, mouth open in surprise. It didn't hurt much. Bucky wasn't exactly pulling at his roots – he was just gripping him, leading him into a taut bow. Steve's hand tightened on the handle of the mug. He felt some tea slosh over the side, splash onto the blankets covering his legs. 

'B- Buck,' he gasped out, and Bucky pulled the mug from his grip. Steve half expected him to throw it across the room and hear it smash against the wall, but no. Bucky just leaned over Steve, still holding him firmly in place by the hair, and put the tea down safety on the bedside table. 

'What, you're surprised now?' Bucky hissed, moving to straddle Steve's hips. He grabbed one of his wrists with his human hand, pinning it to the headboard, and trapped the other under his denim clad knee. 'This is what you were asking for.'

'You're not some mindless, HYDRA automaton, Bucky,' Steve gasped out. He couldn't make much out of Bucky's expression, as his own face was being forcefully angled away, but he could picture it. 

Bucky just laughed humorlessly. 'What do _you_ know?'

'I know James Buchanan Barnes,' Steve said, voice straining from the way his throat was bared. 

Bucky's grip loosened a little in his hair. 'Well that makes one of us,' he said sharply, and climbed off the edge of the bed, tugging Steve after him by the scalp. He was slow and careful about it, giving Steve plenty of time to get up without aggravating his wounds, but he was still demanding; guiding him forward so that Steve had no choice but to follow. 

'Knees,' he ordered as Steve made it properly out of the bed, and obediently, Steve dropped down to the floor. The carpeting was scratching under his bare knees, and it burned somewhat as Bucky led him forward, one step at a time, towards the kitchen. Steve shuffled naked on the floor after him, balancing himself on his hands as well, and winced as he felt a twinge of pain from the entry wound in his back. 

'Bucky, slow down,' he breathed out, and to his surprise Bucky did – pausing in his step until Steve crawled up level with him, panting harshly through the pain. 

Letting go of Steve's hair, Bucky pointed at the counter next to the wall. 'Over there,' he said. 'Stay on your knees, face me.'

'Bucky, what--?'

'Don't talk. Show me you can behave.' He took a step closer to Steve, and tilted his head back with a metal finger under his chin. His eyes flickered to the door. In an undertone he added, 'Show _them_ you can behave.'

He crooked his finger, digging it into the skin under Steve's jawbone, and tugged him forward a short way. 'Counter, now.'

Steve went. He crawled across the cool tile of the kitchen floor until he was kneeling naked by the counter a few feet away from the stove. 

'Okay, good,' Bucky said, stepping over and, to Steve's surprise, opening the fridge. 'I'm going to make dinner. You are not going to move unless _I move you_ , and you're not going to speak until I say you can.'

Steve almost nodded, but stopped himself just in time. Bucky pulled out a few items from the vegetable cooler – which Steve could tell had been freshly stocked – and then glanced down at him again, biting his lip. 

'Wait one moment,' he said, and Steve didn't respond. He just focused on how his knees were positioned on the hard floor, the vague ache already settling in. Taking in deep, steady breaths, he fought the urge to fidget. He knew that sometimes it was okay to argue with Bucky, and other times it was extremely ill-advised. This situation struck him as the latter type. 

Pulling open the cabinet over the counter, Bucky took out two plain glasses and moved over to the sink to fill them with water. Steve watched curiously out of the corner of his eye, not turning his head, and waited for Bucky to turn around again. When he did, he just stepped back over to Steve, putting the glasses down on the counter above his head. 'Here,' he said, and bent forward to take Steve's hands – both of which were resting on his folded knees – and lift them up so that his palms were facing flat upwards, elbows at right angles to his thighs. 

Straightening again, Bucky took the glasses off the counter again, and balanced them in Steve's hands, one on each upturned palm. Not letting his chin drop or moving his head, Steve glanced down. Both glasses were filled completely to the rim, so that the water was almost bulging over the edge of the cup. 

'So that I'll know if you've moved,' Bucky explained, and turned back to the vegetables he had already placed out on the counter. With one last sharp glance towards Steve, he pulled a peeler out of the drawer and began to skin a carrot, unhurried. 

It seemed like an odd sort of discipline, Steve thought, and he was almost tempted to interject that he wasn't sure this is what HYDRA had in mind exactly. But there was something in the straightness of Bucky's spine, in the careful way he was cleaning and cutting up the ingredients on the counter that suggested to Steve that pushing back wasn't the best idea. 

More than anything, he just didn't want to make Bucky take this somewhere he didn't want to. Steve remembered how the other man had disappeared into himself after the incident with the tablets. He didn't want that happening again. No, better to be good now and diffuse the situation than push back and hurt Bucky again. 

Balancing the glasses was... easy enough, but his body felt tense and concentrated. Even as he held himself as stationary as he was able, the water on the top of the glass was still trembling, glistening, with the mild tremors under Steve's skin from the cocktail of drugs he was on. He wasn't sure what would happen if he spilled the water, but he didn't plan on finding out. 

Bucky still wasn't the best cook in the world by any means, but if there was one thing he could do, it was cut things. He decimated carrots, celery, potatoes, red pepper, onions. Since he wasn't cooking eggs or simply heating something pre-made up, Steve suspected that Bucky was dipping into his vary small repertoire and just cooking up a plain stew, like the sort of stew they used to have on biscuits on the days they couldn't afford meat back before the war. 

Stew took a while to cook, and Steve could already feel his arms starting to, if not ache, exactly, at least feel very present. He could feel a very vague tension stirring in his biceps, in the tendons of his arms. Light on the surface of the water in his hands kept dancing up into his field of vision. 

He breathed in and out through his nose, listening to the steady sounds of Bucky's knife on the chopping board. He was low enough down that he was about level with Bucky's waist, unable to see over the top of the counter without moving his head, and just watching the small, shifting movements in Bucky's legs as he prepared the meal. 

Finally, Bucky finished chopping up the vegetables, and Steve's arms were starting to strain. No water had spilled out of the glass yet, but he could see the surface of the water shifting with a bit more urgency as his hands struggled to remain steady. Where he was kneeling, his ankle was beginning to feel numb.

Bucky swept his hair behind his ear as he turned to look past Steve, kneeling down for a moment and opening the cupboard beside him. He pulled out a deep stove pot, and put it up on the counter before cupping the nape of Steve's neck in his warm palm. 'Good,' he murmured. 'Just stay like that.'

Steve almost made a sound in the back of his throat, but swallowed it down. It came out just as a slightly vocalized breath, making Bucky raise an eyebrow. 

'Arms getting tired, Steve?' he asked, just a note of challenge in his voice, and Steve let his eyes narrow slightly up at him. Reaching out his thumb to drag at the swell of Steve's lower lip, Bucky dropped his voice and reminded him, ' _Don't move._ '

Well, then. Steve concentrated his breathing to his core as Bucky turned back to the stove. He had jumped out of planes without parachutes, fought alien armies. He could hold a couple of damn glasses of water for as long as he had to. 

He heard the gas burner on the stove click and huff into low flames, and could see Bucky's metal arm glint in the evening light coming in through the window as he drizzled oil into the pot. Bucky took his time adding the vegetables to the pot, stirring them until they were sizzling and getting tender. Steve closed his eyes, fighting the urge to reposition his legs or lower his arms a little to ease the strain. Just as Bucky was adding liquid stock to the pot, he felt a trickle of water slip over the brim of the glass in his left hand, to drip through his fingers and pool in his palm. 

He made no noise, no motion to move. The glass was still full at least, only the tiniest trickle of water having made its escape. Keeping his eyes shut, Steve just focused on his breathing, on the sounds of Bucky cooking, the dull thumps of the wooden spoon tapping on the side of the metal pot as he stopped stirring the stew and covered it. The hissing sound of the gas changed a little as Bucky turned down the heat to a low simmer, and then to Steve's mild surprise, he felt metal fingers sweeping through his hair. 

He looked up, opening his eyes. 'You're doing well,' Bucky said, reaching down with both hands to pluck the glasses off Steve's palms. His arms felt suddenly lightened, almost as if they were floating even as he kept them perfectly still. Bucky placed the cups down on the counter, then swiped his flesh and blood finger over the damp spot on Steve's palm from where the water had splashed out. 'Yeah, that's fine,' he reiterated, and pushed Steve's arms down. Steve nearly sighed in relief, his muscles feeling tight, uncomfortable. 

How long had he been sitting like that? Half an hour? Longer? 

But Bucky wasn't finished. He stepped around Steve's back, and took his wrists in both his hands again, moving Steve's arms until they were folded behind his back, wrists supported by the opposite hand. It put a different, easier kind of strain on his muscles. 

But then Bucky was coming back to stand in front of him, one hand coming out to cup his jaw, thumb dipping into the corner of his mouth and nudge it open a little, and the other coming up to the front of his jeans, popping the top button. 

Steve's brow furrowed, and he felt Bucky's thumb tense in his mouth. Steve wished he was allowed to look up, see the expression on the other man's face. It was just... unprecedented. He and Bucky had touched each other since the first time, had come accustomed to, at the very least, lying in bed and making out and rubbing off on each other until they were both trembling and smeared with come. But although Bucky was getting better at letting himself relax into the sensations and enjoy himself, he rarely, if ever, took an active role in bringing himself off unless Steve nudged him towards it. 

And he always, always, _always_ put Steve's pleasure first. 

Bucky ran the zipper on his jeans down with a hollow, metallic noise. 'You are _mine_ ,' he repeated, moving his hand from Steve's jaw and instead to cup at the back of his head, bringing him forward so that his open mouth was pressed damply to the swell of Bucky's soft dick. 'To use as _I_ please.'

Steve made a soft sound in the back of his throat, knowing he still wasn't supposed to move. He could smell the heady scent of Bucky through his underwear, could almost taste him as he began to slowly breath a warm patch onto the fabric. He could feel Bucky's cock started to thicken, to swell with blood. 

He could hear the implication in Bucky's words. _This isn't HYDRA, this is me._ Steve wasn't quite sure he believed him. 

Still holding Steve in place, Bucky shifted his hips a little, thrusting his still covered cock up against Steve slack and open lips. 'That's right, Steve,' he said, voice a little rough. 'Stay right where you are.'

Steve could hear the pot on the stove simmering away, could feel his own dick growing a little heavy against his thigh. He didn't _want_ to get off on this: it felt wrong, somehow. Like he would be losing an argument. Maybe he was already losing the argument. He wasn't sure. Whatever. 

Bucky's dick was nearly fully erect now, the hard curve of it rubbing against Steve's lips. With a low groan, he pulled back a little bit to pull the band of his underpants down, freeing it. Steve didn't move, but he did slowly creep his tongue out to lick at his lower lip, and felt Bucky's hand tighten on the back of his neck. 

'Good boy,' he said, and with his metal hand angled his cock towards Steve's lips so that the head rested against the tip of his tongue, bumping his upper lip. 'Just relax your mouth okay. Don't have'ta do nothing. Don't move, you got it?'

It wasn't a real question; or at least, the best answer was no answer at all. 

Slowly, Bucky began to thrust into Steve's mouth, his dick a warm weight on his tongue. He started just with shallow movements, just the head of his cock slipping past Steve's lips and pulling back again. Steve could feel saliva start to mix with precum in his mouth, getting dragged towards his lips until it was dripping over his chin. Bucky built up speed and depth as he continued to thrust, until he was nudging the back of Steve's throat on every careful push forward. 

Trying to breath through his nose, Steve let his head be tilted back as Bucky's thrusts became smoother and deeper, and he found himself looking up into the other man's face. Bucky's expression was tight and controlled, his teeth digging into his lower lip so hard that it was almost going white. 

Steve didn't like it. He was used to seeing emotion on Bucky's face when they did, well, whatever it was they did. He liked seeing the way Bucky would go soft when they kissed, the way he would lick deep into Steve's mouth as if he wanted to be part of him. He liked the way Bucky would kiss him, and kiss him, and murmur into his lips and sigh into Steve's sighs, and kiss him some more until theirs was nothing but the sweet exchange of caresses and praise. 

Softly, he whined in the back of his throat, and he saw Bucky's eyes widen almost imperceptibly at the feeling of the sound humming around his dick. 'Shit, Steve,' he groaned, pausing his thrust for a moment just to bury himself in the warm heat of Steve's mouth. Both of Bucky's hands were now cupping Steve's head, holding him steady, one metal finger rubbing over the shape of Steve's jawbone. 

That's it, Steve thought. He wanted to make Bucky fall apart, to come apart at the seams. Suddenly it seemed like the only way he could win this. Deliberately, he moaned again around Bucky's cock, and felt Bucky's movements falter for just a moment as he groaned in response. Then, on Bucky's next deep thrust, Steve let his throat go slack, fighting back his gag reflex so that Bucky could bury himself all the way down into his throat. 

The sound that Bucky made was almost inhuman, and his hands nearly turned into claws for a moment against Steve's neck as he bent almost in half over him, cock buried as deep as it could go, his hands scrabbling for purchase. 'Holy, _fuckin_ '--' he panted out, and Steve had to fight the urge to smirk around his cock. 

On the stove, the stew was boiling away loudly and merrily, but Bucky seemed to have forgotten it entirely. Steve was pleased to see that he didn't look quite so controlled as he had a few moments ago – now his eyes were blown wide and his lips were open, parted and red, and he was looking at Steve like he was the answer to some deeply hidden secret. 

Before long, his thrusts were losing any semblance of rhythm, and Steve was just keeping his focus on staying still, breathing through his nose, and keeping his throat open without gagging. He could feel saliva smearing all over his chin, and he could feel tears pricking behind his eyes from trying to hold back the discomfort in his throat. His shoulders were aching and his foot was well and truly buzzing with pins and needles. 

But it was all fine, because Bucky was losing it above him, babbling out incoherent, disbelieving praise, his hands not really guiding Steve or holding him in place any more – just clutching at his face and neck as if it was a lifeline. When he came, it seemed to surprise Bucky more than Steve. His cock pulsed against Steve's tongue, and he could feel bitter cum filling up his throat. Swallowing as much as he could, Steve moaned, and it was only then that Bucky seemed to catch up, gasping out a choked off cry and stilling for a moment, before going boneless and lax, struggling to stay on his feet. 

Once his orgasm subsided, Bucky pulled out of Steve's mouth and dropped to the floor beside him, slumping against the counter and tucking himself back into his jeans with shaking hands. 

Steve stayed still, exactly how Bucky had left him – mouth parted, spit and semen leaking out over his lips and down his chin, arms folded behind his back. His own cock was curved up towards his belly, flushed and ignored, but he just let his eyes follow Bucky's movements. The rapid breaths that were slowly evening out, the way his fingers fumbled with the top button on his jeans, the small, incredulous smile he shot Steve's way, before glancing up at the stove overhead. 

'Christ,' he muttered to himself, and pushed himself up on unsteady legs to check the pot. It was nearly bubbling over, and he cursed under his breath before taking off the lid and stirring the stew for a few moments and covering it again. 

He turned to face Steve, leaning back to support himself on the counter. 'Look at you,' he breathed out, a small upturned quirk to his lips. 'Aw, you're so good, Stevie. You're doing so great.'

Steve wanted to roll his eyes or glare at Bucky, because suddenly he was just so annoyed that Bucky was praising him. It didn't really make sense, but he was frustratingly disappointed that he hadn't managed to make Bucky come apart enough to break him out of this mode, at least not entirely.

But obeying was more important than being irritated, so he just stayed stock still and quiet as Bucky reached behind him for a cloth and came and sat down in front of Steve. Gently, he wiped the smeared mess away from his mouth and chin, cleaning him up carefully before leaning in to kiss Steve's mouth softly. He didn't seem to realize he had done it for a moment, and as soon as he pulled his lips away from Steve's he glanced guiltily over his shoulder towards the door, and that made a little thrill of triumph buzz through Steve.

Maybe he _had_ won a little bit, if Bucky didn't think he'd done his due by his own handlers. Good. 

Still kneeling in front of him, Bucky glanced down at Steve's still flushed erection, and stroked one metal finger up it, from base to tip, swirling over the head to play with a small bead of precum. Steve keened in the back of his throat, fighting the urge to thrust forward and not quite managing, his dick twitching and bouncing. But Bucky just laughed, pulled his hand away, and reached behind Steve to guide his hands back into a relaxed position again. 

'Alright,' he said, 'you can move again. Stay where you are though, on the floor, and no talking. But you can get comfortable.' 

Immediately, gratefully, Steve shifted his numb foot out from under him, flopping down into the cool tile so that his back was against the counter and prickling foot extended out before him. 

Bucky smiled, standing up. 'I'm going to finish dinner,' he said. 'While I'm doing that, I want you to touch yourself. Do it properly, but _don't_ come, yeah?'

Steve just blinked up at him, feeling frustrated arousal already coiling in his stomach. But he wrapped a hand around his cock and nodded, doing as he was told, and Bucky leaned in to kiss his forehead. 

'That's it,' he encouraged, turning back to the stove top and pulling his attention away from Steve. 'I'll deal with it properly after we've eaten.' Steve was just about to start glaring daggers into Bucky's back, when he glanced over his shoulder with a grin that bordered on cocky, and reminded Steve way too much of the old Bucky to let him stay irritated. He just licked his lips and said, pointedly, 'See? _Mine_.'

Steve thunked his head back against the cupboard behind him, stroking his thumb over the head of his cock and grinning, and let the smell of boiling stew and the cilantro Bucky was now chopping linger in his senses.


	9. Chapter 9

The streets of New York were familiar, but not the right sort of familiar. Steve sat on the arm of the couch, leaning on the windowsill and looking outside, watching the slow movements of the traffic through the idle streets, the trickling line of pedestrians on sidewalks moving like sparsely drawn ants from this high above. 

Bucky was reading, sprawled on the sofa properly with his head between Steve's pajama clad legs, leaning against his inner thigh. He licked his finger and turned the page on his book as Steve frowned at the scene outside. It was raining, just a light drizzle from the light gray clouds that covered the sky like a thin layer of splotchy acrylic paint. 

The buildings outside were the huge, sky-scraping, glistening spires that Steve had long since started to get used to. They were the flashing lights in the dim, drizzly day. They were the unfamiliar/familiar skyline that just screamed _New York_ no matter now much its silhouette changed. 

But the streets were all wrong. The cars weren't packed in without an inch to move, there were no blaring sounds of honking and shouting and just the general overall _buzz_ of a city, even with the window cracked open to let in sound. 

Bucky was sighing at his book again. He had sighed at the book four times in the last thirty minutes. 

'Just quit reading it, Buck,' Steve said, leaning his head against the cool glass of the window. His stomach and back were barely twinging under the bandaging anymore, so he could sit up here quite comfortably, with Bucky tucking himself against his body however he liked. 

'I wanna find out what happens,' he replied, turning another page disinterestedly. 

Steve rolled his eyes. 'That's a lie.'

'No, I do.' Bucky dog eared the book and chucked it down to the other end of the couch. 'I just don't wanna slog through this whole storyline with the guy. He's cheating on his wife and addicted to cocaine and making a lot of money and he's sad about it all and ugh, I just don't _care_ , Steve.'

'Hasn't that been the last hundred pages or so?'

' _Yes_!'

'So, again, why are you still reading?'

'Because it's the second to last book we have, and I wanna make 'em last.'

'Hm,' Steve said, feeling Bucky bury his face into his thigh and groan again, and went back to staring out of the window. He could taste the occasional fleck of cool rain coming into the room, could smell the scent of summer rain on the air. Could hear hardly anything at all. 

Bucky was glaring at his book as if it were daring him to take it back up. 

'Hey, Buck,' Steve said, before his friend could give in to the temptation to pick up the sub-par novel again. 'Where is everyone?'

It was Bucky's turn to make a noncommittal questioning noise, and glance up at Steve. 'What do you mean?'

'Y'know, all eight million people who live in New York? Look at the streets, Buck. They're _empty_.'

Bucky just sat up with a put upon noise and glanced out the window before turning around to face Steve. 'It looks the same as it has since we got here,' he said. 'And there's people down there, you can see 'em.'

'You remember what Brooklyn used to look like, right?' Steve asked, and caught uncertainty flash across Bucky's expression. 

'Uhhh...' He shrugged his metal shoulder, plucking at the loose arm of his t-shirt. 'I think so?'

'It's quieter out there than when we were kids, and the city has grown several million people since then, Buck.'

'Well, yeah--' Bucky started, but Steve cut him off. 

'And it can't just be, can't just be the helicarriers.' He took in a deep breath. He didn't exactly like to talk about that, and Bucky sure as hell didn't like to listen, but today he just pressed his lips tighter together and let Steve keep talking. 'They didn't just _decimate_ the population, not to this degree. They _couldn't_ have.'

'No, no, they didn't,' Bucky said, scratching at his neck and lowering his voice. He glanced across the room nervously. 'It's just, cities, Steve. You know. They're not, tactically advantageous. Too many people, too difficult to control.'

'So, what? Where is everyone, then?' Steve had a sinking feeling in his gut, thinking about how HYDRA tended to deal with problems. He was already responsible for so much death, so much destruction. This couldn't be all on him. He wouldn't be able to live with himself. 

Bucky scratched his neck. 'How would I know? It's not like I'm high clearance.'

'You didn't see anything?'

'Okay, how 'bout this,' Bucky sighed. 'I'm pretty sure most of the people still in the city are HYDRA personnel, or civilians integral to keeping things running the way it should. Everyone else probably got, I dunno, moved on.'

'Moved on where?'

'I dunno!' Bucky huffed, and shuffled forward a bit so that he could tug at Steve's shirt with his metal hand. 'Come away from the window, yeah?'

Steve looked down at Bucky, and let himself be pulled off the arm of the couch so that he landed with a slight huff on the cushions. Immediately, Bucky moved to crawl between his legs and lie down against him, frowning and closing his eyes. 

'Taking a nap now, Buck?' he asked teasingly, lifting up his hand to run his fingers through Bucky's hair. 

'Will it stop you asking me dumb questions if I do?'

'They're not dumb, and you know it,' Steve muttered, and Bucky made an irritated sound, shifting again so that his arms where folded on Steve's chest, his chin propped up on them to look him in the eyes. 

' _Steve_ ,' he said warningly. 'You know that you're not meant to be asking 'bout this stuff.'

'Well, you were answering,' Steve pointed out. He tilted his head back against the armrest, looking up at the ceiling, and kept on stroking at Bucky's hair. He didn't know why he was prying about what had happened anyway. It wasn't like he really wanted to know. Deliberate ignorance had been doing well thus far, when he could keep it up. But sometimes the questions bubbled up out of him before he could stop them. Now that he was recovering properly from his wounds, the question was starting to press at him. 

_Is there anything I can do? Is there a way to fix this?_

'Because it was more interesting than my book,' Bucky groused in response. 'Nothing has happened! For three whole chapters! Nothing at all! He's talked to the ocean more in those forty pages than he has his goddamn wife.'

'So, does that mean we're talking, people being spread out remotely? Does HYDRA have the resources to control such a disperse population? On a global scale?'

Bucky just narrowed his eyes and scrunched up his nose. ' _Steve_.'

'Well, I guess they do have all the manpower of SHIELD at their disposal...'

'Steve, this is your warning.'

Stilling his hand in Bucky's hair, Steve looked down at him, jerking his head back a little bit. 'Hey, just making conversation.'

'No, you ain't. You're wheedling.'

Steve grinned. 'I don't wheedle. When have I ever wheedled?'

'Right now, and you know it,' Bucky said, prodding him in the chest. 'I'm bein' serious. One more peep outta you, and I'm going to have to do something about it.'

'You're gonna punish me, are you?' asked Steve in return, still smiling. Bucky was looking genuinely peeved, but not in an unsettling way, and although he himself was concerned about the answers to the questions he was asking, Bucky's warm weight against him and the quiet calm of the past week or so were enough to keep him from getting drawn in to linger on it. 

At the question, Bucky's lips quirked up. 'Well, I'll have to.'

'What are you gonna do, huh?' Steve put on a mock-fearful expression. 'Spank me?'

Bucky laughed. 'You making a suggestion, Rogers? Never said I took requests.'

'No, no suggestion,' Steve said, widening his eyes innocently. 'Really. I can't think of anything worse.'

'Hmm,' Bucky mused, shifting so he could creep his fingers down Steve's torso to play with the elastic band of his pants. 'Well then. One more _wheedling_ question, pal, and I'll have to.'

Steve sucked in a breath. 'Have to what?'

Slipping his hand under Steve's waistband, Bucky slid his hand down to squeeze one of Steve's buttocks, lifting him up little to grind against him. 'Make this glow like a ripe peach,' he murmured, moving up to take Steve's lower lip between his teeth. 

Steve laughed, his teeth bumping Bucky's as the other man kissed deeper into his mouth. 'That's real cheesy,' he replied between kisses, but Bucky just shrugged. 

'Oh really? You seemed _peachy keen_ on the idea a minute ago,' he said and squeezed the cheek of Steve's ass again, pulling back a little so that he could kiss down over his Adam's apple, and into the hollow of his laughing throat. 

'That's godawful, Buck,' Steve replied, shaking with amusement. He was enjoying Bucky's mostly good mood at the moment. Everything had been peaceful for a while now, and the change in Bucky's demeanor had been so warming to Steve that he dared not mention it unless it shatter under inspection. So instead he just grinned down to where Bucky was now trying to pull the loose collar of his shirt far enough aside to kiss down his chest, and said, 'I guess I'll have to keep my pie hole shut, then.'

The hand that was still inside Steve's pants and underwear began to stroke over the swell of his buttocks, warm fingers digging into soft, muscled flesh. 'You're not very good at it though, are you?' Bucky asked, prompting. 'Always getting nosy. It'd be a first if you were to do what I tell you the first time I say it.'

Snorting, Steve let his hips grind up against Bucky's thigh, and threw his head back. 'Bull. I'm always so _good_ for you,' he said, and then decided to lay it on thick and smirked up at the soft gray lit ceiling and added: ' _Sir_.'

'Okay,' Bucky said, nuzzling his nose behind Steve's ear. 'Okay, then. If you say so. What's it look like when you're _not_ bein' good, then?'

'Oh, I wouldn't know, _sir_ , I would never be anything but good for you. Why would I? I'm just your good little boy, your _pet_. You own me, _master_.' 

Steve's voice was coming out sickly honey sweet, and he could feel Bucky basically vibrating against him with mirth. 

'Jesus Christ,' he chuckled. 'Shut up and give me a reason to spank you, you little punk.'

Steve tilted his head up to look down at Bucky, miming zipping his lips closed, and the other man just plastered on an exaggerated frown, his lips twisting as he tried to fight back a smile. 

'No, no, no, no, _don't_ shut up,' he urged Steve. 'The other one, the other thing.'

'Giving you a reason to spank me?' Steve asked and, Bucky nodded keenly, the grin breaking through past the frown. 

It wasn't the best opening. They were having a good week, a quiet week, and Steve really didn't want to push his luck. But there was something that had been lingering on his mind, itching to be asked for a while. And it was definitely something that would give Bucky reason to punish him. 

Chewing down on his lip, Steve let the pleasant mood drop, and lifted a hand up to scratch his neck. Bucky was still gripping his ass, holding him flush against him, but neither of them was grinding against the other anymore, and Bucky seemed to have noticed Steve's change in demeanor, because he wasn't trying to kiss everywhere on Steve's neck and chest as before, and instead was just watching him curiously, waiting. 

The pause dragged out, Steve tracing the silent implications of words as he tried to think how to phrase it. He could hear Bucky's heart thudding evenly against his chest. He took a breath in. 

'What's first for you?' Steve asked at last, deadly serious. 'HYDRA or me?'

Bucky's expression fell, and his hand immediately slipped out of Steve's pants to hold himself up so that they were no longer pressed flush together. His voice dropped down to a hushed whisper. 'You can't ask me something like that,' he breathed. 

Steve shrugged and closed his eyes. 'Just did.' He hadn't meant to ruin the playful mood, but. Well. He kinda had. It was important, though. He just needed to know. Licking his lips, Steve opened his eyes again, ready to let the subject drop, ready to just brush off the question. 

But Bucky was staring at him, lips twisting and tightening against unspoken words, and finally he managed to crack out, 'It's not _like_ , you can't call it-- _I didn't choose this_.' Bucky swallowed, seemingly surprised by his own words, but once they were out he nodded, seemingly to himself. 'I didn't choose _anything_ , except for you. I belong to them. That's just how it is.' 

Steve frowned. 'What do you mean you _chose_ me?' 

'I don't want to talk about it.' Bucky sat up, pushing away from Steve to sit on the end of the couch, running a hand through his hair. 'Okay, really. Enough questions. Gotta, you gotta get on the bed. Face down. Pants to your knees.' 

Steve shuffled up, sitting against the armrest. 'No, not now, Buck. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--' 

'Hey, don't get to pick and choose.' Bucky flashed him a pointed look. 'I said this is how I'd punish you, this is how it'll go down.' 

'No, come on.' Holding his hands up entreatingly, Steve caught Bucky's gaze and ducked his eyes. 'I was dumb, just, how 'bout something else? I shouldn't have asked you that.'

'Damn right you shouldn't have,' Bucky grumbled, but he nudged Steve's chin back up with a metal knuckle, and Steve saw that his expression was just exasperated, not angry. 'Trust you to go and spoil a good time. Should punish you for _that_.' He pushed himself to his feet, sighing, and raised an eyebrow at Steve. 

Steve didn't move from the sofa, just looked up at Bucky and tilted his head, smiling a hesitant, lopsided smile. 'Yeah, I guess,' he said. Bucky rolled his eyes, reaching down to pluck at the fabric of Steve's shirt. 

'Up,' he ordered. 

'On the bed,' Steve finished for him, pushing himself up. 'Face down, yeah yeah, I got it.'

'You don't know when to stop, do you?' Bucky asked in response as he pushed Steve ahead of him across the room. He nudged him with one finger between the shoulder blades. 'Think maybe you should be a bit more amenable here and there?' 

'Hey, hey, I'm doing it,' Steve replied as he climbed up to kneel on the bed, crawling forward a short way to lie down, head on the pillows. 

Bucky came up to the side of the bed, just within his eye-line, and brought his hand up to his mouth to bite on the thumbnail as he cocked an eyebrow. 'Missed a step, didn't you?'

Steve sighed, and reached down on the bed to slide his pants and briefs down over the curve of his ass. He rolled his eyes, face pressed down into the pillow. Squirming his hips, he got the pants about mid way down his thighs before he let go and brought his hands up to grip the pillow under his head. 

'Good,' Bucky said, and bent over to push Steve's t-shirt up his back. The feeling of his hand was cool, and a shiver ran down Steve's spine. 

'You're not going to use that hand are you?' he asked, looking up at Bucky out of the corner of his eye. 

'Why? Don't think you can take it?'

Steve scowled, knowing it was his weakness. Imply he couldn't handle something and he'd be the first to beg for it. 'Whatever you're going to do, get on with it,' he replied tersely. 

Bucky let out a cool laugh. 'Alright, but first you're gonna tell me what you did wrong,' he said, sliding metal fingers down the dip in Steve's back, before squeezing at the plump swell of his ass. 

Steve groaned. 'Bucky, _really_?'

'Mm hmm,' he confirmed. Moving his hand away from Steve's ass, Bucky just pressed his metal palm flat to the base of his spine, holding him down firmly. 

'I was asking questions,' Steve answered, resigned. 'Okay? 'Bout things that are Not Allowed.'

'Did you stop when I told you to?'

Steve frowned, feeling like it was a trick question. 'Not really?' Above him, Bucky huffed.

'Not _really_?'

'Okay, _no_?'

Pressing his palm a little further into the dip in Steve's lower back, Bucky just shrugged – a small movement in Steve's peripheral vision. 'Good enough,' he said. 'And how many times do you think you deserve to be spanked for that?'

Steve sucked in a breath, tried to twist his neck to get a clearer look at Bucky. 'I, I don't know?'

'Give me a number,' Bucky ordered. 

'Uh, eight?'

Bucky licked his lips. 'You sure 'bout that? Just eight?'

'Uhnn,' Steve breathed into the pillow, squirming his hips on the bed under Bucky's palm, feeling exposed. He could feel the cool breeze from out the window gusting across his bare ass, making his muscles twitch and spasm. 'Fine, no. I deserve more, more than that, yeah.'

'How many?'

'Twenty?' he suggested, and the way Bucky's hand tensed against his spine seemed to suggest it was a good choice. 'Yeah, twenty.'

'Alright,' Bucky agreed, and Steve caught him smiling in the corner of his vision. Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, Steve relaxed, shivering with anticipation. Bucky didn't seem to be genuinely annoyed anymore, so Steve just closed his eyes and waited for the first blow to fall, chewing on his lip. 

Even though he had been waiting for it, the first smack came as a surprise. Steve gasped in a breath as Bucky's human hand collided with his ass, right in the center, sending out sharp warmth across the skin of his rear. 'Shit,' he breathed. 

'That's one,' Bucky said, then lowered his voice. 'You should count them for me, case I get distracted. Don't wanna give you more than you asked for. That wouldn't be fair, would it?'

Steve wriggled his hips, feeling his cock beginning to fill with blood between his legs. 'Uh, no,' he answered, distracted. 

The second slap collided with his ass, forcing a sudden yelp out of his mouth. Bucky wasn't holding back, even if he was using his human hand. Each slap was landing hard and firm, stinging and warm. Steve's cock twitched. 

'Steve?' Bucky prompted. 'What was that?'

'T... two,' he answered, voice coming out more ragged than expected. 

'Good,' Bucky murmured, and spanked him again, this time landing the slap with a curved palm and rubbing his hand soothingly over the tingling skin. 

'Three,' Steve breathed out, pushing back into Bucky's touch. 

The fourth, fifth and sixth slaps all tore out panted moans from Steve's throat, his cock now hard and aching between his body and the bedspread. His fingers clenched in the pillow, and he tried to cant his hips, but Bucky's metal hand was still holding him in place so that the slaps would land sure.

'Uh uh uh,' Bucky chided, bringing down the seventh strike firmly. 'Number?'

'That's seven,' Steve answered, his voice cracking. He looked up at Bucky, who's lips were parted and glistening from where he was wetting them. 

'Enjoying yourself?' he asked. 'This is meant to be punishment, remember?'

Steve moaned into the pillow. 'Keep, keep going,' he begged. 

'Why?' Bucky prompted. 'Why should I if you're just gonna get off on it?'

'Because I deserve it,' panted Steve, and the next slap landed sharp and sure, making him gasp loudly. ' _Fuck_ , eight.'

'That's right.' Bucky rubbed over Steve's backside encouragingly. 'Good boy.'

Steve counted out the slaps, stuttering here and there as he tried to remember where they were up to, his mind going foggy with the mix of pain and pleasure. By the time Bucky landed his fifteenth smack, Steve was just a squirming, writhing mess. He could feel a patch of precum dampening, spreading on the sheets below him. 

'Fif-- fifteen,' he gasped out, and Bucky rubbed his palm over his stinging flesh soothingly. 

'Last five,' Bucky said, his own voice coming out a little unsteady. Steve looked up at him with watery eyes, blinking, and could see the shape of Bucky's dick curving under the taut denim of his jeans. 

'Bucky, please,' Steve begged, rubbing his hips down against the sheets. 

'Mm? What d'you want, Stevie?'

Steve fumbled as he tried to find the words, feeling delirious, and furrowed his brows as he turned his face deeper into the pillow. 'The other, _your_ other hand, Buck.'

Above him, Bucky seemed to freeze for a moment. 'You sure?' he asked finally, hesitant. 

Nodding into the pillow Steve pushed his ass back into the air. 'Uh huh,' he breathed. 'I can take it. I _deserve_ it.'

'Oh yeah?' Bucky asked. He was already lifting the metal hand of Steve's back, still rubbing the flesh and blood one over his ass, fingers digging into the curve of his ass and pulling his cheeks apart. 'How do you figure?'

Steve wracked his brains for a moment. 'You said, you said I should be punished for spoiling the good time,' he finally suggested, and Bucky huffed out a laugh. Steve could see him adjusting the front of his jeans, popping the top button. 

'I'm not having a bad time now,' he confessed. 'Are you?'

'Oh, oh _yeah_ ,' Steve said, rubbing his cock up against the sheets. Shit, but he thought only a few more good slaps and he might be close. _So close_. 'I really think I'm leaning my lesson. It just needs a bit of reinforcing.'

Biting his lip and grinning, Bucky climbed up onto the bed, straddling Steve's thighs from behind and bringing both hands down to rub and squeeze his round ass. 'Yeah, you've talked me into it,' he said. 'Guess you do deserve it.'

Steve moaned. The feeling of the cold metal hand over his stinging, burning skin was soothing like ice. 

'How 'bout,' Bucky started, still just stroking idly, not objecting when Steve started canting his hips down against the mattress, building up rhythm. 'How 'bout we say, if you can make it to twenty without making a mess of the fucking blankets anymore than you're doin' right now, I'll give you a reward?'

Steve's ears pricked up. 'What kinda reward?'

Bucky seemed to think for a moment, rocking his own erection against the curve of Steve's buttocks. 'Hmm, how would you feel about my mouth?'

The long, low keening noise that escaped Steve's mouth was probably answer enough. Bucky laughed. 

'Alright, count the last five for me, Stevie. And no coming until I say so, if you want your treat.'

'Yes,' Steve panted, and Bucky paused one more time. 

'And call me _sir_ , I liked it when you did that.'

Steve let out a breathy laugh into the pillow, fingers tightening on the cushioning. 'That was a joke, Bucky.'

'Mm, I still liked it.'

'Okay, okay fine, _sir_ ,' Steve said, feeling vaguely ridiculous. The feeling left him as soon as the sharp slap collided with his ass. 'Holy fu-- _God_ , sixteen. Sixteen, sir.'

The sting from the metal hand was far, far more acute, but instead of doing anything to temper Steve's arousal, it sent a strong surge of pleasure shooting straight to his cock. To his surprise, he found himself almost immediately on the verge of coming. 

'Oh, oh, _oh_ ,' he gasped, having to lift his hips up off the mattress, so as not to go over the edge. 'Oh, I'm not sure I can do this.'

The next smack came without warning, with no response from Bucky, sending Steve's hips pushing back into the mattress. He made a broken noise, having to squeeze his eyes tight closed and grit his teeth to stop himself from spilling onto the sheets, almost forgetting to count out the number of the strike. 'Seventeen,' he finally breathed, fingers scrabbling against the blankets and pillow as he squirmed. 

'Just have to hold off for three more,' Bucky said, encouragingly. 'And then you can come in my mouth, okay?'

'That doesn't help, Bucky,' Steve gritted out, before adding a prompt, 'Eighteen,' as the next strike landed. He could feel his dick throbbing insistently, begging for release. Anything, the slightest touch, could probably set him off right now. _The one time these stupid drugs don't make it difficult to keep it up,_ he thought with vague frustration. 

'C'mon, you're so close, you're doing so good,' Bucky said, going back to rubbing soothing circles into the red, stinging flesh of his ass. 'Just two more.'

Steve squeezed his eyes tight shut as Bucky lifted his metal hand again. The strike came down smooth and clean, sending a hot, stinging feeling shooting to Steve's dick. 

He unconsciously ground his hips down into the mattress, and before he could reel it back in, he was coming. 'Shit, Christ, oh, _oh_ ,' he panted out, his orgasm ripping through him and sending tremors of pleasure through his body. 'Nineteen. Last one Buck, sir, please, _now_.'

The smack landed, softer than the others, just as the last shivers of his orgasm pulsed through him. Bucky's metal fingers squeezed into the skin of his ass, firm and encouraging as Steve rocked against the bed, riding it out and stammering incomprehensible murmurs of pleasure. 

Bucky sighed above him. 'Well, that's a shame,' he commented. 

Steve buried his face into the pillows, his cheeks suddenly flaming and pleasant shivers still twitching through his nerves. 'Sorry,' he replied, muffled. 

Bucky ignored the apology. 'Push your hips back,' he ordered. Steve felt both hands, flesh and metal, come out to his waist to pull Steve up and towards him. He couldn't help but whine in the back of his throat, his whole body feeling even more pliant and dizzied than it usually did from just the pills alone. 'Just lie there, I'm just gonna...'

One of Bucky's hands disappeared, and Steve heard the sound of his fly unzipping. 'Wow,' Bucky added as he shuffled closer to press his hard cock against the crease of Steve's ass, beginning to rock just gently back and forth. 'It really is red as a ripe peach now.'

Steve pushed back into the way Bucky was thrusting deliberately against him, breathing out a resigned sigh. 'Feels it.'

'Does this hurt?' 

'Nah.' Steve shook his head, feeling Bucky lean into him to press his mouth open and damp to his shoulder blade, pushing up his shirt along the way. His hips were beginning to lose rhythm, his words stuttered and panting. '...Feels fine.'

'Stop – _fuck_ – stop sulking. I can't come all over your ass if you're gonna sulk.'

Steve snorted. 'I'm not sulking,' he objected. 'I'm … unwinding.' Once the words were out, he felt Bucky's hand come up to nudge his chin around so that that he could look into his face. 

'Think you can earn your reward next time?' Bucky asked, hot gusts of air against the curve of Steve's shoulder. 

Steve just hummed into the pillow, arching his back. ' _Please_ ,' he answered, unsure exactly what he was begging for: another chance to earn his reward, or for Bucky to spill over the curve of his ass and mark him. Both. Something else, maybe. 

Bucky made a low sound in his throat, and shuddered over him, digging his teeth lightly into the flesh of Steve's shoulder as he came. Steve could feel the warm, sticky slide of come pulsing onto the still warm, tingling skin of his ass. 'God, Steve,' Bucky gasped, and Steve felt the way his body was vibrating, quivering, curled over his own. 'It's _you_.'

After a long moment, Bucky flopped to the side to lie on the mattress with a heavy huff of expelled air. Steve bounced a little on the bed with the impact, and metal fingers coming up to trace over his buttocks made him shiver. He could feel the cooling cum being smeared messily into his skin, and he squirmed, face still buried in the soft cushion. 

'Did you hear me?' Bucky asked, sounding sleepy, his voice just a murmured drawl. 'I answer your stupid, reckless question, and you don't even say anything.'

Steve turned his head on the side, blinking. 'My ques--?' He cut himself off, eyes going wide. 'Oh. _Oh_.'

'Yeah,' Bucky smiled, sadly, his eyes flickering to the door again, his voice going down even lower, so that it was barely a sound over the wind and rain outside. 'So, _you_. But, y'know. Don't go getting ideas or nothing.'

Steve didn't want to move, since through it all Bucky was still tracing idle, messy patterns over his skin – but he shuffled closer to press his lips to Bucky's, his own eyes drooping with a distant feeling of loose doziness. 

That was it, he realized. That was what he had been pleading for.


	10. Chapter 10

The soft beeps of a text message coming through caught Steve's attention while he was in the kitchen with Bucky, standing in front of the stove and frying off onion and garlic in a pan. He didn't look up, but Bucky did, quickly wiping his tomato wet hands on a hand towel and plucking the phone up off the bench, not removing it from the charger. 

(Steve knew he wasn't allowed to touch, or really even _look at_ the cell phone, so he kept his eyes on the cooking, stirring.)

'Hm,' Bucky said after a few moments, and picked up the knife again. The slick sharp noise of metal on the chopping board filled the room once more. 

'Anything important?' Steve asked.

The blinds in the kitchen were rattling a little from the breeze coming in through the open window. Oil was sizzling in the pan like a drop of water on a hot stone, and the tiles were cool under Steve's bare feet. Quiet, and undisturbed. That was the best way to describe the day. Yesterday there had been blaring sirens outside, for a while, and the whirr of helicopters. The rapid _put putputputputput_ of machine gun fire. Not today, though. It had quietened down out there. 

'Nah, someone's just coming by in the morning. Milk run.' Bucky lifted up the board, sliding the tomatoes and juice into the pan smoothly with the blade of the knife. 'I'll put you out before they get here.'

Frowning, Steve glanced over at him. 'Anything to do with yesterday?'

The gunfire had woken them both up, carrying up from streets below. It had been early morning, and the sun had had yet to rise. Steve had heard it immediately, but it hadn't slipped past the disinterested filter of his drug addled mind until Bucky had pushed himself upright in the bed, breathing harshly. 

'Go back to sleep,' Steve had mumbled, still mostly out of himself, clumsily reaching up to pull Bucky back down with him. The gun fire had been on and off, a long way below, probably a couple of blocks away. Quiet enough that Steve wasn't registering it as a threat, his mind so used to being sequestered, unconcerned with anything outside of this small apartment. 

Bucky had pushed Steve's arm off him, climbed out of the bed, his bare feet silent on the carpet as he inched towards the window. He held his metal hand out behind him, palm up towards Steve. _Don't move_ , it said silently. 

He had hovered by the window for probably a full half an hour, watching the streets below with a keen eye, a sniper without his gun. Waking up on the drugs could often be a slow ordeal, and Steve had blinked slowly awake, struggling to tell dreams from reality as Bucky perched quietly aside in both, and the sharp sounds of gun fire wriggled into his subconscious. 

Finally, finally, as the sun was rising, Bucky had crept back over and climbed back under the sheets, tangling himself with Steve. He pushed his knee between Steve's legs, hooked his ankle over Steve's own and held him in place with both arms, a bit too tight and tangled to not feel like restraint. 'It's nothing, Stevie,' he had said. 

The noises in the street had carried on for hours – not like chaos, but with a sharp clarity of order and structure that set Steve on edge. 

But, again, they had stopped now. All was quiet. 

Bucky dropped the knife into the sink, wiping down the chopping board with a cloth. 

'No,' he said. 'Nothing to do with yesterday.' 

*

That night, it started raining. The soft pat of water hitting the glass of the windows and rustling the blinds with chilled flecks of rain started up just as Bucky was stripping down for bed, climbing over to push Steve into the mattress and kiss him, before rolling away to drift off into sleep. Bucky slept most nights, at the moment. 

To Steve, the rain sounded a bit like the crashing waves of the ocean. He closed his eyes, let it wash over him, feeling the cool breeze and the salt bitter wind; the warm sun, the way the bed melted into sand under his body, the sheets a spread out towel. 

The rain, the waves crashed on the shore as people screamed – not in fear, but in joy. 

'There was a shoot out just yesterday, Cap,' Natasha pointed out, kicking sand and seashells onto his still slightly damp legs. The water was rising up the beach, occasionally licking at Steve's feet; once crashing all the way up to his knees. 'And you want to spend the day at an amusement park?' 

Bucky snorted beside him, his hat balanced over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes. 'Oh, he didn't _want_ to, I had to drag him outta the house by the collar.' 

Steve grinned up at Natasha. He had to squint against the glare, but her red hair was framed in a copper gold glow in the sunlight, and her hands were on her hips. Her eyebrows were raised. 

'We'll go soon,' he promised her. 'It's just, you know. Nice here. Lie down for a while?' 

Grumbling, Natasha shrugged off her jacket, sat down on the sand, leaned back on her hands. 'Not what I expected from you,' she said, but a few feet away a little boy was chasing his laughing mother in small circles in the shallows, and she couldn't help but smile. 'But I guess I've got a couple of hours to win you fellas a few toys at the prize hall.' 

'Atta gal,' Bucky said, lifting up the brim of his cap to wink at her. 

'Shut it, Barnes. You're just as bad as he is.' 

Steve sighed, lifting his hand up against the sun. It was lovely out here, the soft crash of waves and the happy voices all around – the mechanical, vibrant sounds of the rides behind them. But it was starting to loose its appeal. 'Hey, Buck, maybe we _should_ head off,' he suggested, glancing down at his friend. 'Now that Nat is here.'

Bucky pushed himself up onto his elbows – two flesh and blood ones – hat falling off into the sand. He quirked an eyebrow suggestively. ' _Or_ , we could make out on the beach in the sun and enjoy a pleasant afternoon,' he teased, reaching up lazily to tug at Steve's neck. 

Natasha huffed in annoyance as Bucky tried to pull Steve down for a kiss. 

'Uh, don't Buck,' Steve laughed, pushing his hand away. 'Someone'll see. We could get arrested.' 

'What are you talking about?' Bucky gestured around with one hand, still grinning. 

Steve looked out over the rolling peaks of the Coney Island cyclone, over the crashing waves of the beach, the four million dollar boardwalk. 

And it was all empty. 

*

Steve woke to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom, and the bed empty. He rolled over, curling in on himself and burying his face in the pillow Bucky had been sleeping on, still warm. His abdomen twinged slightly at the movement, but it was barely enough pain to be noticeable now. 

What was noticeable, was the hollow feeling lingering in his stomach as his brain began to filter between reality and dream, leaving the lingering warm touch of sun behind. He could almost imagine Natasha was sitting beside him on the bed – but slowly, as he woke up properly, the feeling faded, and he groaned softly. 

_You're dreaming about ghosts_ , he told himself, but it didn't do much. He'd been dreaming about ghosts for a long time. He tried, he really did. He really _had_ tried, to block it all out. But to leave the past behind, for all the guilt and the regret, it hounded him – a shadow never far behind. Another ghost to add to the tally. 

He had been dreaming like this for a while now – they followed him into sleep, the faces of those he missed. The spaces outside these walls, the times before now. It was pointless to ask why he couldn't leave it behind, couldn't let it go. He knew why. It was dumb to think he might be able to chase it away with pills and quietude, and Bucky's brand of order. Dumb. Nothing important ever stays hidden for long. 

Presently, the shower turned off, and Bucky stepped out of the bathroom. His hair dripping wet, it hung nearly to his shoulders. He had a towel slung around his hips, and from the way he was moving and glancing around the room, he clearly thought Steve was still asleep. 

'I don't want you to put me under today, Buck,' Steve murmured, looking up at him through half lidded eyes. 

Bucky glanced over, surprised – but then his face hardened and he moved over to the far wall to pull clothes out of the dresser. 'Well, tough,' he replied, crouching down to sift through the lower drawer for a shirt. 'Don't get much say in the matter.'

He hadn't brought the syringe and little vial of milky liquid out of the bathroom yet, Steve noticed, so there had to be still a little bit of time before the HYDRA agent arrived. Still groggy from sleep, he pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. 'No, I'm serious, don't do it. I... I need your help.' 

Bucky frowned, dropping the towel to the floor as he climbed into briefs and a pair of dark jeans. He sat down on the couch heavily, unrolling a pair of socks. 'I _am_ helping you.' 

'You're not listening. I need to _know_ , Bucky.' Steve took in a heavy breath. 'I can't, can't keep going like this.' 

When he looked up again, Bucky's eyes were alarmed. There was a touch of wild panic to his gaze. But his voice remained fairly expressionless. 'But we're-- it's _good_ , here,' he said, faintly. 'I've tried to make it _good_.' 

'I know you have,' Steve replied. He looked down at his hands, resting on top of the bed spread. 'And it's, you've... I've tried to just accept it, because having you back is, well. I wanted it to be enough. I couldn't find my place in the world before, anyway, not after I woke up, so it didn't seem to matter if I wasn't, wasn't a part of it anymore. But there are people who I consider friends, and I need to know if there's any chance they might still be alive. And even if they're not, even if they're all gone... What we heard yesterday, I can't live with myself if there's stuff like that going on out there, if it's happening to innocent people, and it's my fault, and I _don't do anything about it_.'

Part of Steve wondered if he was going to be punished for saying all that. It certainly fell under the umbrella of things he wasn't Allowed to talk about. But Bucky was listening, still and quiet. He had a disquieted look in his eyes, and he had paused mid-way through pulling on a sock so that it was hanging half off his foot. 

He stared at Steve for a long time. 

Finally, his voice quiet and laced with trepidation, he whispered, 'I can't. What are you planning on doing? _Questioning_ them when they get here? You _can't_ , Steve. They'll take you away from me.'

Admittedly, Steve hadn't really thought that far ahead. 'I don't know. I just don't want you to knock me out. I want to be able to, I don't know, see them. Hear if they say anything about yesterday. Bucky,' he said, pleading. 'Bucky come on.'

A pained noise came out of Bucky's throat, seemingly unbidden. He ran his hands through his hair, distressed. 'Let me – shit, Steve. I'll tell you. Anything he says to me, I'll tell you about it, when you wake up. But I gotta put you out.'

It wasn't good enough. Steve, he trusted Bucky. He would always trust Bucky, even as he came at him with flurried movements and a sharp blade, even as he sent bullets tearing through the flesh of his body. Trusting him was instinctive, involuntary. But he knew that there were some things he couldn't leave in Bucky's hands, and telling the truth was one of those things that he just couldn't leave faithfully to his friend. Not right now. Steve's voice dropped down low, imploring. 'Please, Bucky,' he said, but the other man was already done with the conversation. He held his hand up, steeled his gaze. Pulled his sock all the way on. 

'Enough, Steve. That's enough. You're gonna have your breakfast, then I'll knock you out before the guy gets here. That's, that's the end of it.'

Shuffling forward on the mattress, Steve made a movement to stand up. ' _No_ ,' he started, but Bucky was already on his feet, pulling a dark red t-shirt over his head. He strode across the room, metal arm coming out to push Steve back into the pillows. 

'Don't fight me on this,' he ordered. 

Steve glowered up at him. 'It's important.'

Bucky shook his head and slid his hand down Steve's arm to hold his wrist firm against the mattress, leaning in close. 'You think it's important,' he said quietly. 'I understand that. But you can't expect me to, to help you to – I can't disobey, Steve. I _can't_.'

Bucky's breath was warm – he was close enough that every word came softly gusting over the skin of Steve's temple. Once he had spoken, Bucky sighed and dropped his head down to rest against Steve's, as if he was falling asleep on him on a train. 

'I just can't,' he repeated. 

'You said I was more important to you than them,' Steve replied, barely more than a low mumble. He could feel the fight going out of him, dragged away. He missed the days when the fight could never, ever go out of him. Now it slipped away too easily, through his fingers. 

Bucky nodded, nose nudging Steve's temple, his grip on Steve's wrist loosening. 'You are,' he replied. 'Which is why I can't lose you to them.'

*

Bucky turned the radio on while he put breakfast together. The station was playing something far too upbeat for the heavy tension that still hung in the air, and Steve just lay on his side, staring at the door to the apartment, listening to the vocalist sing out some nonsense _too-ra-loo-rye-aye_. 

'Here,' Bucky said as he sat down on the bed and passed a bowl of oatmeal to Steve, along with his usual morning painkillers. 

'I'm not hungry,' Steve replied, taking the tablets. Bucky moved to pass him the water, but Steve had already swallowed them down dry. Sighing, Bucky propped the bowl on the mattress. 

'Whatever,' he said, and stood up again, heading into the bathroom. 'Haven't got long until someone's going to show up, so eat it or don't. I'll put you under in twenty minutes or so, you can have it after you come to if you want.'

Steve tried one more time, eyes trained on the bowl of oatmeal as the other man got to his feet once more, plating on the metal arm shifting restlessly as it recalibrated. 'Bucky...'

'I swear to god, one more word about this,' he interrupted sharply. 'I don't want to have to punish you today, alright?'

Steve simply rolled his eyes. 'Whatever you say, Buck.'

Huffing out an irritated noise, Bucky closed the door to the bathroom behind him, with a little more force than necessary. Steve could hear him opening the medicine cabinets and pulling things out, and Steve just glared after him for a few moments before sitting up properly and idly tugging the oatmeal towards him. He hadn't been lying – he really wasn't hungry. But he didn't like how the painkillers went down on an empty stomach, so he disinterestedly picked at the food as he waited for Bucky to emerge. 

Minutes passed, and the sounds inside the bathroom stopped, but Bucky didn't come out. He stayed inside the room for nearly a full quarter of an hour, and Steve was surprised to find that he had finished most of the bowl of oatmeal by the time the door finally clicked open. 

Bucky was carrying a small tray with the things he needed on it – syringe, drugs, gloves, alcohol wipes, etc. – but he was moving slowly, tensely, eyes downcast. He put the tray down on the bedside table and pulled a chair up next to the mattress, sitting down. 

'Arm,' he said, picking up the gloves off the tray. Steve watched while he tugged them on, and then held out his arm before Bucky could prompt again. 'Good,' he said, and pulled out the alcohol wipe. 'Okay, we've gotta make this look real, okay?'

Steve looked up sharply. 'What--?'

'No, shh, act normal. Just hold your arm out like that, stay where you are.' Bucky finished cleaning the crook in Steve's arm, and reached over to pick up the syringe and little opaque vial. 'They're watching us. I mean, they have cameras all the time, but they'll be extra careful about making sure everything is right before they come in here. They're, they like to think they're not, but they're scared of what you could do to them awake and recovered.'

Steve just blinked at Bucky, his heart thudding in his ears. 'Thank you,' he said, barely able to hear his own voice. Bucky looked at him, and his expression was somewhere between a dark glare and a conspiratory smirk. 

'Well,' he murmured. 'You still gotta do as I say though, okay? You'll pretend to be out the _whole time_ , don't move a muscle. Just go completely lax, no matter what you hear. If they touch you, don't react. Don't react to anything they say to you. I'll... I'll try to see if I can get them to talk about yesterday, but I can't promise anything. I doubt I'll be able to get any answers about your friends, but I'll try.'

Steve nodded. Bucky still looked irritated, but it didn't matter. The sun was coming in through the window behind him, lighting his hair with a halo of gold and right now he looked like daybreak itself to Steve.

He tapped the side of the syringe as always, lifting it up to the light to check for bubbles. Once satisfied, he took Steve's wrist in his metal hand and pinned it to the bed, shifting closer to the mattress on the chair. For a moment, as the needle came in towards his arm, Steve wondered if he'd just been messing with him to preclude any argument. 

But the needle didn't go into his skin – it plunged neatly into the mattress beside him, and Bucky pushed down the plunger, emptying the liquid into the soft cushioning. From a camera on the other side of the room, it would have looked like it had gone straight into Steve's veins. 

'Okay, go all limp now, alright?' Bucky said as he pulled the syringe back and started cleaning up. He leaned over to press a short kiss to Steve's lips, and Steve let them part invitingly, forcing himself to go loose and sink into the cushions as if he was losing consciousness. 'I'll count you out,' Bucky added. 'Just start blinking heavily, and on one close your eyes and just, yeah. You know. Stay still.'

'Got it,' Steve murmured, dropping his head as if he was nodding off. 

Quietly, Bucky murmured: ' _Six, five, four, three, two, one_...' and Steve closed his eyes, going as still and lax as he could. 

He heard Bucky push the chair back and stand up, his hand coming out to ruffle Steve's hair. 'Good boy.'

Steve wondered how long he would have to stay like that. 

Elongated minutes passed as Bucky cleaned things away in the bathroom and switched off the radio, shuffling around the apartment to do nothing in particular while they waited. Steve felt the twitching desire to shift, to move around restlessly; but he managed to stay just as he was as the long moments stretched on until finally, finally he heard a key turn in the lock of the door. 

Steve could feel his own breaths, in and out of his nose, tight and constrained as he waited. 

For a moment, the only sound was that of Bucky's feet on the floor as he crossed the room, and the rustling of plastic bags as the agent passed over what were presumably supplies. 

Finally, the agent expelled a short breath and said, 'Report.'

Steve's heart thudded in his chest and he had to fight the urge to open his eyes. Light was filtering in through his lashes, and he could feel them flickering, but fought not to glance them open. _He knew that voice_.

'Nothing to report,' Bucky replied, sounding nothing like himself. 

'Really?' Rumlow asked, and Steve could hear him moving in from the doorway, followed by a short thump as he dropped down onto the couch. 'Because it looked like you guys were having a bit of a domestic earlier.' 

There was a short moment of silence before Bucky replied, and Steve could practically feel Rumlow's eyes trained on him the whole time. Stomach twisting, Steve concentrated on staying still and not letting any tension show on his face. 

'Nothing relevant,' Bucky answered eventually. 

Rumlow laughed. 'Oh, is it up to you to decide what is relevant?'

Another pause. 'No.'

As far as Steve could tell, Bucky hadn't moved an inch since the start of the conversation, still standing by the door while Rumlow made himself comfortable. The way Bucky spoke, flat and emotionless, Steve could tell it was trained into him – but he also could practically hear the gears turning in Bucky's head as he tried to measure out what he should say. 

'So,' prompted Rumlow, 'what were you arguing about?'

There was something in his voice, a mild tone of amusement and curiosity, that unsettled Steve. It was as though, while he knew that _nothing_ in these rooms was really private, Steve had always been able to feel like it was _theirs_ , his and Bucky's. But the way that Rumlow was asking as if he had the right to every little aspect of their personal lives, and as if he enjoyed it, made something clench in his gut, unpleasant and uncomfortable. 

'He was asking what the disruption yesterday was.' 

There was a soft sound of plastic rustling; Bucky putting the bags of supplies on the floor next to the door. Steve listened carefully, but Bucky didn't seem to move beyond that. 

'Ah, yeah,' Rumlow replied offhandedly. 'That. Well, what did you say?'

'That is wasn't his concern.' 

Rumlow let out an approving hum. 'Good. Did he push the question?'

Bucky faltered briefly before replying, 'Not much.'

The sofa creaked a little bit as Rumlow shifted. 'You should have disciplined him, probably,' he said, and it didn't sound much like a reproach or command, so much as friendly advice. It was worse, like that. Sounded like poison. 

'It wasn't necessary,' said Bucky, still expressionless. 

Rumlow just made a skeptical noise before pausing for a long, considering moment. 'Well, anyway,' he said lightly. 'I brought you Pop-tarts. My treat, kid.' He laughed, dryly. 'Thought you'd probably never had them before, and they won't be around for much longer, so--'

'– Sir?' Bucky interrupted, and Steve could sense Rumlow starting. 

'Oh, they're little toaster pastries with filling, you'll see when you--'

'No.' Bucky cut him off again. 'I,' he started, but stopped speaking halfway through the vowel. 

Rumlow's voice was low and dangerous when he said, 'Did you just interrupt me, Asset?'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

All Rumlow had to command was a low, ' _Knees_ ,' and Steve heard the soft thump on the carpet as Bucky dropped to the floor. Rumlow took in a deep breath. 'Now, what was so important you felt the need to cut me off?'

'The disturbance,' Steve heard Bucky say quietly. 'It was close to here?' A quiet moment passed, and Steve imagined that Rumlow must have nodded Bucky on, because he continued, hesitant. 'I... I was wondering if I might be needed on the field.'

Rumlow chuckled. 'We had it under control.'

'Understood. Not a serious security breach then?'

Steve could tell by the slight tremor in Bucky's voice and in the way the feel of the room was suddenly growing more tense, that Bucky was pushing his luck by continuing to push on the matter. With a shiver of fear, Steve wished he hadn't put Bucky up to this. He knew what Rumlow could be capable of when pushed – he had that streak of brutal efficiency that, even when Steve had considered the guy an ally, had always nagged at him. 

But Bucky could look after himself. It was just a matter of whether he _would_.

'Nothing too serious, no,' Rumlow answered, still darkly amused. 'Nothing we couldn't handle. Anyway, you're retired. Shelved.' His voice dropped down low. 'We don't need the Asset any more than we need _Captain America_.'

Bucky didn't rise to the bait. 'I understand,' he said flatly. 

Steve could hear the smirk in Rumlow's voice. 'That you're expendable,' he added.

'Yes.'

'That _he's_ expendable.'

This time Bucky hesitated before answering, but his response was the same. 'Yes.' And then; 'The prisoner. Were they also expendable?'

Rumlow let out a low whistle. 'Someone is curious today,' he commented. 

'I shouldn't have spoken,' Bucky replied immediately, hasty – but Rumlow cut him off. 

'No, it's fine,' he said, and then a considering noise. 'Well. This time, anyway. It's fair for you to be curious. You've met her, the one who escaped.'

Steve had to stop himself from taking in a sharp breath – but he heard Bucky inhale a matching one for him anyway. Rumlow couldn't be implying what he thought he was implying. 

'No,' Rumlow said sharply. 'Don't look at _him_ , look at _me_.' A short pause. 'Are you going to tell him this?' he asked. 'When I leave today. Are you going to tell him that all this time she was out there, not even very far from here? What will he think? He'll wonder if he could have helped her, won't he? Maybe, he could've if he could get off his ass and even manage to feed himself without your hand-holding.'

Silence. Steve could feel himself shaking – tried to stay still, but his whole body seemed to be thrumming with emotion now. His throat felt blocked off, like he couldn't swallow, couldn't breath. 

'Answer the question,' Rumlow ordered. 'Will you tell him?'

'I,' Bucky stammered for a moment, before letting out a breath. 'No.'

'Why not?'

'He doesn't need to know.'

Rumlow huffed out a short laugh. 'That's true, I guess.'

Bucky made a short noise, like the start of a question. But he cut himself off. 

'What was that?' Rumlow asked. 

'Nothing.'

'No, you were going to ask something.'

'I don't need to know,' Buck said. 

Steve could hear the grin in Rumlow's voice as he replied. 'No, you don't. Were you wondering what happened to Romanoff?'

Bucky must have nodded, because Steve just heard the chair creak as Rumlow got back to his feet and crossed the room to stand near where Bucky was kneeling. Steve heard Bucky let out a choked off gasp, barely audible. 

'Well, you were right,' Rumlow said in a low voice. 'You _don't_ need to know.'

Fighting not to open his eyes, Steve waited out the long, silent moment, before he heard Rumlow take a step closer to the bed and throw over his shoulder at Bucky, 'Why don't you go put those things away while I check on your boyfriend?'

Some soft shuffling sounds as Bucky got to his feet, and just a quiet: 'There's nothing to check on.' He sounded like he had turned away, and after a moment Steve could hear Bucky picking up the supplies again, while Rumlow came right up beside the bed. 

'He seems like he's getting better,' Rumlow said from directly above Steve. With quiet, even breaths, Steve did his best to stay motionless, lax. 

'The wounds are healing,' Bucky replied evenly, from the kitchen. Steve could hear him getting things out of bags and packing them away as he had been told to, but he was doing it very slowly, and Steve suspected that if he opened his eyes he would see Bucky watching carefully. 

Suddenly, Steve felt unfamiliar fingers tugging at the hem of his shift, pulling it up over his chest. 

'Fresh bandages,' Rumlow remarked. 'Does he really need them?'

To Steve's surprise, Bucky didn't reply – and Rumlow just reached out to prod at the spot on Steve's abdomen where one of the bullets had torn through him. It stung, and he nearly winced. 

'Maybe I should do something about this,' Rumlow said thoughtfully, still holding Steve's shirt up. He could feel the cool breeze from the open window sending chills across the skin of his stomach. 'We don't exactly want him running around any time soon.'

'He's not going to be running anywhere,' Bucky replied. 'Not on the dosage he's taking.'

With a short sigh, Rumlow dropped Steve's shirt and took a step back. 'Well, he is _your_ responsibility,' he said. 'When parents give a child a pet fish and tell them it's their job to look after it, I guess the whole point is not to step in when it looks like the kid might forget to feed it. You gotta let them see the fish die for them to learn the lesson, you know?' He laughed. 'That doesn't apply perfectly here, but I guess the point is, just remember. It's on _you_ , Soldier.'

Steve could hear Rumlow's footsteps moving away towards the door. The door-handle made a muted sound as it turned. 'Enjoy your Pop-tarts,' Rumlow said, and then Steve heard him step out of the room and shut the door behind him. The lock on the door clicked. 

'Keep your eyes closed,' Bucky whispered sharply. Steve did, realizing that with Rumlow's presence he had nearly forgotten about the cameras watching them. Forcing himself to stay still, he bit down on his tongue, swallowing back impulsive words. 

After a moment, Bucky let out a long exhale, clearly satisfied that Rumlow was gone, and walked over to the bed, climbing up onto the mattress. 

'I'm sorry,' he said, lying down next to Steve. He buried his face into the crook of his neck, breathing out warm, unsteady breaths. 'I know you want to react, I know you have things to say. But you gotta stay still for a while, okay? Just a while longer.' 

Now that Rumlow was gone, Steve couldn't quite keep the tremors from wracking his body, his mind feeling like a sharp, speedy mess of desperation and anger and the need to _move_.

Bucky buried himself in closer to him, wrapping himself up in Steve's body so that they could breath together – both past paced and shaking. 

'Just stay still,' he repeated. 'Stay still with me. Just for a while.'


	11. Chapter 11

Bucky's weight was pressed warm against him for a long time. The blankets on the bed were tangled around Steve's legs, and the room felt quiet and small and closed off, just as it always did. 

For the first time, it was making Steve feel like he couldn't breath, like he was choking. 

'I can't stay here anymore,' he murmured after what felt like hours, lips barely moving. Bucky shook against him, his fingers digging in tight into the fabric of his shirt, and Steve just heard him drag in a wet, unsteady breath. 

But he didn't say anything. Steve had half expected a simple, dark, _Well, it's not as though it's up to you._ Something like that might have made it easier – something to obey, or something to fight against. Instead it was just Bucky, trembling against him and clinging on tighter as if by not moving and not speaking, nothing would ever have to change. 

Eventually, Bucky breathed out again. Steadier this time. He pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, shifting away from Steve, and said quietly, 'Just, just stay there for a few more minutes. I'll be right back.'

Steve kept his eyes closed, said nothing. The next thing he heard was just the soft sound of Bucky padding across the floor, and the low hum of the kettle starting to boil. The noise filled the room, growing louder as long minutes passed. 

Rumlow's words kept going around and around in his head. He couldn't stop thinking about what he had implied, that Natasha had been nearby the whole time, a prisoner like him. 

No, not like him. He was something else. He was Bucky's _responsibility_ , his pet gold-fish. He was an indulgence. Christ, Steve knew HYDRA. This was a _joke_ to them. Something to watch from the sidelines, and see where it went. Observe how far they could take it, how much they could twist and pervert something that stood against them. 

Air stuck in Steve's throat, making him feel nauseated. They had gotten what they wanted. He had given them the satisfaction. But it couldn't matter now, Steve reminded himself. There were more important things to worry about. 

If Natasha was still alive – shit, who knew? – he had to find her. And who else might still be out there?

The kettle clicked off, and Steve heard Bucky pouring out a drink in the kitchen. After a few moments, he shuffled back into the living room, sat down on the edge of the bed and told Steve he could open his eyes. 

Steve blinked, adjusting to the sudden shift in light, and looked at Bucky. 

His hair was shadowing most of his face, and his eyes were red. He was looking down, holding a mug of tea in his lap, seemingly entranced by the way the surface of the drink was shifting and catching the sunlight. 

'C'mere,' he said softly, reaching out to cup his hand over the nape of Steve's neck, thumb stroking softly through the hairs growing longer at the base of his hairline. He didn't meet his eyes, but lifted up the mug to Steve's mouth, helping him drink it down, shaking his head when Steve tried to take the mug for himself. 

'Bucky—'

'Steve, I know,' he said sharply. ' _Drink_.'

For a moment Steve wondered if Bucky had slipped something into the tea, something to knock him out for real, maybe. Make him forget. He didn't know. He didn't know what Bucky would do, not really. But he hoped he was being paranoid, so he kept sipping until the tea was nearly gone, feeling no ill effects. 

'Now listen to me,' Bucky said quietly, putting the mug down next to the bed when it was empty. 'You're getting better, but you aren't recovered yet. You're not in any shape to be going anywhere right now.'

Steve glared at him. 'I don't care,' he said. 'I can do it anyway.'

'I know,' Bucky replied, rolling his eyes. 'You wouldn't be _you_ if you let it stop you. But you're going to have to let _me_ stop you. You are Not Allowed to leave, you hear me? It's not just the injuries, it's the drugs as well. You wouldn't get far, no way.'

Steve scowled. He knew Bucky was right, abstractly. But it didn't matter if he made it or not, not really. What mattered was trying. But still, it just wasn't in him to go against a direct order from Bucky right now. 'You don't understand,' he argued. 'I need to find out what happened to Natasha, I need to know if--'

Bucky cut him off, and Steve's words dried in his throat as he saw the expression on his face. 'You're not the only one who wants to know where she is, you know,' he muttered. 

Surprised, Steve sat up against the headboard, shifting away. 'You tried to kill her,' he pointed out. 'Why would you care what happened to her?'

Bucky's shoulder just jerked in an aborted shrug. 'I tried to kill you, as well,' he answered. 'I've been-- I can remember--'

'You can remember what?'

He just let out a low sigh. 'I dunno. Some things. Ronnie Burke.' He rolled his eyes at Steve's questioning noise, and gestured vaguely with his hands. 'Er, red hair, nose like this. 'Bout this high.'

'A kid?'

Bucky nodded. 'Yeah, I guess. He was the same age as me. Traded him my Coscarart baseball card one time, I think, then stole it back when I saw him pickin' on you behind the school building.'

Steve just blinked at him for a long moment. 'Oh,' he said distantly. 'That Ronnie.'

'Yeah.' Bucky looked down and sighed. 'Bits and pieces, is all I remember. But Natalia.' He shrugged. 'Got bits and pieces of her in there too.'

'Shooting her?' Steve asked, and Bucky nodded. 

'Hm, but that's not all.' Staring down at his hands, Bucky tapped his fingers, watching the metal plating shift smoothly. 'Anyway.'

Steve stared at him as Bucky slipped back into quietness, watched the thin twist of his mouth, the way his lips were drawn tight and curved into a sad frown. 'Anyway,' Steve repeated, and laughed dryly, shaking his head. '“Anyway”, Buck? Can't you-- can't you just, look outside for a few minutes for me, please?'

'There's nothing outside that matters,' Bucky replied, something hollow and repeated in his tone, the lines of a script. 

'Of course there is!' Pushing the blankets down past his legs, Steve climbed up to kneel, and reached forward to hold Bucky by the upper arms, feeling the left cold and unyielding, but gripping hard anyway. Bucky seemed to flinch back a little, but shot Steve a warning glare even as his body went slack and listless, letting Steve hold him up. He was trembling again, his eyes taking on a glassy look as they drifted to the doorway. 'I can't let it stay like it is, I have to get out there and _change_ things, you know that, Bucky.'

He shook his head, a stand of hair catching on his lip. 

'No, you _do_ ,' Steve insisted. 'You just told me, you just said you want to find out what happened to Natasha.'

'It's not my place.' His voice was a little distant, but stronger than Steve expected from the way he seemed like he was disassociating from what Steve was saying, looking anywhere but at him and slipping away inside of himself. 

'Forget about your place!' Steve snapped. 'Tell me what you, _you_ , Bucky Barnes, want to do about this.'

Bucky gnawed on his lip for a moment, finally blinking and looking at Steve. Slowly, his expression went from distant to hard, and his mouth curled. 'I want to make dinner,' he said decisively. 'And I want you to stay here, in bed.'

Steve snorted and huffed back onto the pillows, letting Bucky go. He twisted, swinging his legs off the side of the mattress. 

'That's bullshit,' he said, and suddenly found himself surprised as Bucky darted around, too fast for Steve to have seen quite how he did it. Suddenly he was pinning Steve back onto the bed, holding him down, both of his wrists trapped in grip of the metal hand. He was gripping so tight that it hurt, and Steve hissed out through his teeth. 

He pushed up against him, trying to kick Bucky off from on top of him, but the force of the metal arm pulling his hands up and back and the sudden spiking pain in his abdomen as he twisted allowed Bucky to keep him down easily. Steve struggled. He knew, _he knew_ he was stronger than Bucky, should be able to get him off – but his limbs still carried the vague feeling of heaviness from the drugs, and after a few minutes of grappling on the bed he was tired and gasping for breath. 

Angry, he went limp and glared up at Bucky who quirked an eyebrow, eyes sharper than before. 

'See?' he said. 'If you can't even fight me off, how do you plan on taking out all of HYDRA?'

'You're not a coward,' Steve just gasped out, his voice ragged but his eyes going tired. He could feel sudden exhaustion starting to seep into his bones, and his body slackening. He knew it was chemical, artificial – and he knew it proved Bucky's goddamn point. He turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut, annoyed. 

'And you're not an idiot,' Bucky snapped, tightening his grip on Steve's hands for just a moment before pushing himself up, letting go. Steve rubbed at his wrists, not opening his eyes as he heard Bucky stalk away into the kitchen. 

*

To his own surprise, Steve slept. He didn't mean to drift off, and he was so angry that he would have doubted it would be possible – his nerves felt like they were vibrating, and his gut was churning so much he could almost taste bile in the back of his throat. 

But nonetheless, as Bucky did whatever Bucky was doing in the kitchen, he dozed. It wasn't a comfortable sleep. It was a gnawing, twitchy, sickening one that lingered somewhere between consciousness and dreams, and made him jerk awake more than once from phantom noises whispering in his ear that seemed to real but were not.

He woke up tireder, to Bucky's cool, light touch on his ankle. He looked up, and saw that Bucky was holding the bed tray with a couple of bowls of food, a glass of water and the tablets. Steve dropped his head back on the pillows and groaned. 

Sitting down, Bucky propped the tray down on the bed. Steve didn't look at it. He didn't care what they were having for dinner. He just resignedly held out his hand for the pills. 

He felt Bucky drop it into his palm. 

Shifting to sit up, he looked down at the tablet in confusion. 'One?' he asked, and Bucky nodded. 

'You can't come off them all at once,' he replied, voice low. He held out his hand, wrapping it around Steve's to close his fingers around the tablet, apparently conscious of the cameras seeing that he was changing the dose. 'Gotta slowly reduce how much you're taking. I'm going to give you another in the morning, but only the 10mg dose rather than the twenty, like this, okay?'

Steve just stared at him for a long moment, feeling a slow, relieved smile break onto his face. 'Yes, Bucky,' he said. 'Yes.' He swallowed down the tablet. 

The tray sat between them, plastic and precarious and suddenly offensive; so Steve sat up to move it to the side table before tugging Bucky towards him. 'Forget about dinner for a bit,' he said into Bucky's lips as the other man quickly caught himself from losing his balance, smiling sadly into the kiss. He nodded. 

'I'm sorry,' he said, pulling back from Steve's mouth a short way. 'I find it hard to do what is...' He bit down on his tongue, apparently finding something unsayable in the word _right_. 'But you, you are. And I know that, and I'm trying to be better about, not always...' His voice dropped very low, so quiet Steve could barely hear him. 'Obeying.'

'But you know that getting out of here,' Steve murmured, bringing his hands up to tangle in Bucky's hair. 'It's important. You agree?'

With only the shortest of hesitations, his lips trembling as he pressed them tight together, Bucky nodded. 

*

A few days passed, and Steve could feel his head getting clearer, could feel his body becoming a little more... real. He was still taking the tablets twice a day, but his dosage had dropped from 40mg, apparently, to thirty in total, and Bucky was promising that in a couple more days they would replace both tablets with the lower dosage so that Steve would be down to half of what he had been taking before. 

'It's too fast,' Bucky had been saying hesitantly, but Steve promised he felt fine. Sure, he was feeling some mild muscle pain and his digestive system was a little bit sensitive, but other than that he was okay. There was a deep, lingering sensation of constant anxiety, but he couldn't say whether that was from the protracted withdrawal or from the anticipation of finally getting him and Bucky out of here. 

Bucky wouldn't listen to plans, in any real sense – as soon as Steve started talking, he would become nervous and jumpy, constantly looking towards to doors and windows, and usually make up some excuse for something else that needed doing or cleaning, or simply just tell Steve that there was no point thinking too far ahead when they still needed more time to get Steve off the drugs and to a point where he would have his strength back properly. 

But there was one other thing that was niggling at Steve, so one afternoon, impulsively, he asked. 

'Were you lying to Rumlow?' he said, and Bucky just looked up at him, confused. 

'Who is Rumlow?' he asked, sounding genuinely perplexed. He was on the floor, doing sit ups, and he paused as he pulled himself up, wiping the back of his hand over his forehead. 

Steve pushed himself onto his elbow, leaning over the edge of the couch. 'Uh,' he started. 'The guy who was here last week?'

Bucky just lowered himself down to the ground again with a huff of air. 'Oh, right. Didn't know his name.' He pulled himself up again, and glanced over at Steve. 'They don't send him often,' he said. 'Only that one other time, actually.'

Steve suspected that meant the time after the pills. He just swallowed around a response, thinking that Rumlow probably didn't need to be sent; he most likely went out of his way to request it. 

'Lying to him about what?' Bucky asked. 

'About whether you would tell me about Natasha.'

Bucky stilled, thumping back down onto the ground and not moving. He turned his head to look up at Steve. 'It's pointless,' he said stiffly. 'You were awake.'

'You wouldn't have said anything, would you?'

Bucky just pulled up the hem of his t-shirt to wipe at the sweat from his face – although Steve suspected he was just hiding behind the material, finding an excuse not to meet his eyes. 'I really don't know,' he said, muffled. He dragged the shirt down with his hands so that it was just covering his mouth and nose, and narrowed his eyes up at Steve. 'You ain't the easiest person to lie to.'

'Okay, then tell me why you wouldn't have told me.'

Bucky was quiet for a while, still hiding most of his face. His t-shirt was black, and help up how it was to hide everything except Bucky's eyes, it almost reminded Steve of the mask he had been wearing as the Winter Soldier. 

Finally he breathed out, and let the shirt fall so that it wasn't hiding his face, still hitched up most of the way up his chest. 'Jesus, Steve,' he just said. 'I just didn't want nothing to change.'

*

'Why won't you talk to me about this, Buck?' Steve asked finally, blurting it out when Bucky shied away from the topic one too many times, disappearing into the bathroom to “clean the sink”. He caught the door before it shut after him, and the other man looked surprised, as if he had been thwarted in his attempt to vanish. 

'I, I just,' he stammered, reaching into one of the cabinets for a bottle of surface spray, not meeting Steve's eyes. 'I think it's dangerous to plan it. Don't you?'

'Well, we need some sort of game plan,' Steve said emphatically, before catching the way Bucky was pointedly shooting his eyes towards the little black spot above the mirror that Steve had never registered as a camera before. He tried to suppress a shiver, and forced himself to appear less agitated. 

They had to maintain appearances, he knew that. Trying for casual, he leaned against the door frame and sighed. Bucky started to spray down the sink, grabbing a cloth off the shelf. 

'There isn't much _too_ plan,' Bucky said impassively. 'It's just going to have to be when the moment feels right. Ideally some sort of distraction, but that can't be counted on happening any time soon. After that, it's just a matter of getting you out of here. You'll want to leave the city, and get somewhere you can't easily be tracked, and lay low. Getting out of the city will be top priority. There are plenty of places to hide here, sure, but they can mobilize easily so it's not worth it.'

Steve felt his jaw falling open, and his brows knitting together. He stared at Bucky, who was now wiping down the sink unnecessarily slowly with his metal hand. 

'What do you mean?' he asked, hearing his own voice as if it didn't belong to him. 'You're coming too.'

Bucky just stared at him blankly. 'No, I'm not,' he replied, as if it was obvious. 'I'm _not_.'

Steve could feel his pulse suddenly racing, and he took a stumbling step into the room. 'Of course you are, we're getting out of here together.' He reached out, tugging the cloth out of Bucky's hand and throwing it into the sink. He tangled their fingers together. 'Where, what else would you do?'

'I'm staying here,' Bucky replied plainly. 'I'll be able to buy you time. But I, I can't _leave_.'

'Why not?' Steve asked, staring into Bucky's suddenly distraught face. He looked panicked, like things were slipping apart, and his hand was holding onto Steve's own so tightly that Steve thought his blood might be cutting off. 

'I can't,' Bucky just repeated. He was looking searchingly into Steve's gaze. 

'No,' Steve said, hearing the word come out choked. 'What? No. You can't stay here. That's insane. What would happen?'

At that, Bucky's eyes just went wide and he shook his head fervently. 'No, no, no, Steve, you don't want to--'

'No, I think I do. I'm your responsibility to them. So what happens if I get outta here, and you don't come with me? Would they do what they used to do to you? Whatever it was they did to make you, for-- forget?'

Bucky's teeth worried his lip. 'Uh, no,' he answered, and Steve could _feel_ the blood pounding through his veins where they were gripping tight to one another. 'Not, not that.'

'So,' Steve started, and Bucky nodded. 

'I wasn't meant to remain in use-- uh, I wasn't meant to survive the, the last mission, Steve. It's only because they, they thought with you...' He scratched his neck, and Steve couldn't help but think that he sounded way more impassive about his own life than anyone ought to. 'They've had me for _decades_ , Steve. I'm outdated.'

'That's why we're getting out of here together.'

Bucky just made a frustrated growl. 'It's like, it's like asking--' He cut himself off, and took in a deep breath. 'Look, do you think I don't _know_ that they've broken me, Steve? Misused me? I, I know that. I'm not an _idiot_ , okay? But, you can't...' He blew his hair out of his face and tilted his head back, seeming unable to get words out. 'It's like a stranger asking a dog to heel that's been told by its master to stay where it is.'

'I'm not a stranger,' Steve replied, a touch desperately. 'And you're not a _dog_.'

Bucky looked down at his bare feet and mumbled, 'May as well been.'

' _No_ ,' Steve insisted, and then whined in the back of his throat, dropping down to the floor to look up at imploringly Bucky. 'You need to come with me. If you don't, I can't-- I can't _go_. Not if, no. Not if you're just going to stay here and let yourself get killed.'

'Decommissioned,' Bucky corrected, as if that made it better. 

'Bucky.'

Bucky's hand came out to hold Steve's cheek, thumb rubbing over his jawbone. 'But you have to go, because you're _right_ , Stevie, you're right.'

'No, not without _you_.'

'Well, then,' Bucky said with a noncommittal shrug. 

'Yeah,' Steve replied, shuffling forward to bury his face into the crook of Bucky's thigh. 'Well, then.'

*

They were at an impasse. It hung in the air like humidity, dense and suffocating and silent. 

Days passed. Maybe weeks passed, Steve wasn't counting. But nothing he could say could convince Bucky to entertain the thought of leaving. 

'It's not possible,' he insisted, again and again, eyes wide and head shaking _No_.

Steve begged, Steve argued. He whispered pleading words into Bucky's skin in the dead of night, and he entreated him into his lips, trying to convince him, persuade him, assure him that they could do it, they could leave – but only together. 

It was late one evening, the sun setting like rust and blood and the soft shade of rhubarb outside. They had finished eating, and Steve had taken his second tablet for the day – the smallest dosage, and his head felt clear and his body felt stronger. He felt sleepy and dozy from the warmth hanging in the air and the way Bucky was kissing ticklishly down his spine for no reason other than that there was little else to do. 

He also felt the low curl of anxious tension settling in his stomach. He pushed down into the cushions of the sofa (where he was lying, face down) as Bucky darted out his tongue to lick a long, shivering line up from the base of his spine to his shoulder blades, and the anxiety spiked up into his sternum like a jolt of static charge. 

'Shit, that tickles, Buck,' he breathed out, burying his face in the cushions. He felt Bucky's lips twitch against him. 

'Does it?' he asked, smiling. 'Should I not?'

'No, no, it's good, just,' he said, but paused as he heard the mobile phone buzz on the counter in the kitchen. 

It vibrated twice, just a low humming noise, and then stopped. Bucky immediately sat up. 

'Uh,' he said, bringing his human hand down Steve spine in a slow, light stroke, before pressing his palm down on his back to signal for him to stay in place. 'I'll check what that is.'

He stood up and crossed the room, and Steve lay still on the couch, twisting his neck to follow him with his gaze. Outside, he could hear the low rumble of traffic, and voices calling out, and it struck him that it was louder than normal. The sounds of vehicles moving through the city had a lower, denser tone to it, heavier. 

Bucky picked the phone up off the bench, and pressed a button. There was a sudden blare of indecipherable noise – voices that couldn't be made out, one person shouting over the rest – all of it tinny and distorted by the sound of the video recording. Steve propped himself up on his elbows to look better at Bucky, who's eyes were going slowly wider and his lip going pale where he was biting it between his teeth. 

The video lasted maybe twelve seconds, and then the sound cut out and Bucky slammed the phone down on the bench and took a stumbling step backwards. 

'Steve,' he said. 'If you're going to leave, you have to leave now.'


	12. Chapter 12

The video was slightly lagged, pixels dragging into each other and making the images and the sounds clash into a cacophonous mess. Whoever was filming was moving on some sort of vehicle, and couldn't keep the camera steady – streets blurred past, and the roar of wind blew out the phone's tinny speakers. 

But after a few moments of gray and brown pixelated blurring, the vehicle pulled to a stop and the image cleared. 

It was Times Square, and the sun was low in the sky, fogged in a glow of rust, blood, rhubarb. The buildings were stained indigo in the dull gloom, and the bright lights of the screens and billboards all around the square were all showing the same two images. 

About half the screens displayed the red glow of the hollow skull and eight curled tentacles that made up the HYDRA emblem – the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. _'CUT OFF ONE HEAD'_ \-- yadda yadda yadda; Steve didn't feel the need to read closer. The other image was simply camera footage, showing the same images that could be seen from where the video was being filmed, but from a much closer angle.

In the center of Times Square was an elevated platform, cordoned off by wire and surrounded by armed soldiers. There were more soldiers standing on the platform itself, six of them in a line, spaced out about a meter between them. At their feet, knelt six civilians, hands behind their heads and bowed over. 

Steve's hands shook as he held the phone. In front of the platform, a crowd could easily be seen, herded in and surrounded in the distance by even more soldiers, guns pointed into the assembly. It was impossible to make out expressions for the most part, due to the low quality of the footage – but from the way several people were bent over, faces in hands, Steve could see that they were crying. 

The speakers were still cracking with the sounds of trucks wheeling in, and to Steve's surprise he could hear it distantly outside as well – the dissonant sounds of mobilization – but over the noise, he heard one voice shout out, _'Stop! They didn't do anyth--'_ before the video ended and the home-screen on the cell came back up. 

Steve stared at the gray-blue background, and the little message icon for a long moment, before he was startled by the distant sound of a gunshot firing. 

'It's happening now,' Bucky pointed out quietly. 'It, it's the perfect distraction, Steve.'

Steve looked at him, eyes wide. 'We have to _do_ something.'

Another gunshot echoed off from several blocks away. They weren't too far from Times Square, Steve knew that. He had sussed out their location, roughly, looking over the tops of buildings that could be seen from their apartment. If they moved now, they could get there quickly enough. 

They could help. 

'Steve,' Bucky said, reaching out with his metal hand to hold Steve's tightly. His hand was steady – of course it was, the mechanical one never shook – but Steve could see him tremoring under his skin, hear it in his voice. 'This is the perfect chance. They're distracted, they have a whole crowd of noncombatants to keep contained, so as soon as they notice you've moved, they won't be able to mobilize efficiently. This is the best shot you're going to get.'

Steve nodded, tension lining his shoulders as he waited to hear another gunshot. 'You're right,' he said quickly, getting to his feet. 'I can get to Times Square, I can--'

'-- _No_ ,' Bucky interrupted, grabbing him by the elbow. 'God, Steve. No. There's nothing you can do for them, it's a waste of time. It's six civilians.' He shrugged, wincing. 'Four, now. It's not worth it.'

'They're _people_ , Bucky. They're worth saving.'

'They're not worth you throwing your life away over,' Bucky insisted. 'You won't save them, and you'll be running directly into the fire.'

Steve tugged his arm out of Bucky's grip, moving quickly over to the dresser and pulling out a drawer. 'Buck, the only way I'm leaving here without you, is if I'm the only person who can help those people. And it looks like I am.' He pulled out a thick, dark sweater – too heavy for the weather, but good for fighting in. Better than pajamas at least. 'I'm taking some of your clothes.'

Another gun shot rang out. 

Bucky let out a shaky breath. 'Don't do it,' he said. 'Don't do it. I'm, I'm ordering you not to do it.'

'Don't give a crap.' In the bottom drawer, Steve found a pair of black combat fatigue that he recognized as part of the Winter Soldier's uniform. Good. He shucked off his own soft, cotton pants hurriedly, and climbed into them. 'I have to.'

'They're down to three,' Bucky snapped, storming over and slamming his hand on the dresser. 'You'll never get there in time to help anyone.'

'Wanna see about that?' he challenged right back as he hurriedly climbed into Bucky's boots. They pinched a little, but they'd have to do. He glared up at Bucky from the floor. 

Bucky swore emphatically and dropped to the ground. 'Okay,' he said, tugging his trainers towards him and pulling them on. 'Okay, I'll come with you. If you give up on this fucking stupid plan, I'll come with you, and we'll get out of here.'

Steve paused, laces tangled around his fingers. 'Together?' he asked, as another gun shot rang out. 

He nodded. 'Yes, Stevie. Together. You and me.'

Staring at him, Steve's heart was thudding in his chest. Bucky was right. He hated to admit it, but Bucky was right; they were almost too late to help anyone in the Square. But it wasn't too late to use them as a diversion. 

God, that sounded awful, Steve thought. But, well. But Bucky was right. 

He nodded. 'Yeah,' he said, tying the laces on the boots up quickly, before reaching forward to take Bucky's face in his hands. Bucky was still looking down, tying up his own shoes, but he glanced his eyes up at Steve, before closing them slowly and letting out a long breath. 

'I didn't recognize you for the longest time,' he muttered under his breath, and Steve fell forward, pressing his forehead against Bucky's crown. He reached down to help him tie his other laces. They had to be fast – HYDRA would already be taking note of their behavior, possibly dispatching people. Steve could feel the words vibrating through Bucky's skull as he talked. 'I still don't quite know why I'm doing this.' 

'Really?' 

Bucky breathed out a laugh, and tipped his head up to catch Steve's lips with his own before standing up, pulling Steve after him by the kiss. 'Nah, I know exactly why,' he said, and glanced around the room before taking a short step towards the door, nodding at Steve to follow with him. 'It's because when I thought I'd killed you, even if I didn't know who you were, all I knew was that I had to fix it.

'You were everything,' he continued, as they stood in front of the door. Steve reached out to grip the door handle. He knew it was locked, but he could break it easily enough. He glanced at Bucky. Bucky wasn't looking at him – Bucky was peering down into the peephole in the door, which Steve was just now noticing glowed with the faint reflective quality of a camera lens. He was grinning. 

'You _are_ everything,' he said, and curled his metal hand into a fist, sending it flying towards the door. It cracked with the impact. 

Within moments, the apartment was empty, only the soft sound of footfalls climbing the stairs. 

*  
*  
*

Steve isn't sure when, but at some point, he remembers something. Things lift slowly, like fog on a cold day in a low valley, slipping away until the sun shines unexpectedly through. The light that he sees is that of it glinting off glass, glass all around as he lies on cool metal and bleeds out. 

He can't even feel his wounds, not really. Or the sensation of pain is so total that it ceases of be of consequence. He just lies there, listening distantly to the sounds of detonations and blowouts and the low whistle of targeted strikes below. It sounds like chaos, but it also sounds so rhythmic, so ordered, as to almost be soothing. 

He breaths, and it is ragged and wet, and he can feel something sharp pressing into his cheek; some shard of glass or jagged piece of metal he can't see, from God knows where. He can't move. 

What he remembers is mostly sounds and light, yeah. And this strange feeling of knowing that pain is a thing, the only thing, so overwhelming as to consume everything else. But he also remembers hands. Hands and a voice. 

He remembers feeling the hands pressing into his bullet wounds, hurried and shaking. The voice is confused and startled and a little angry. Angry at him for lying here, dying, and confused as to why it's angry. He can't remember what it says, no. Not words. But he gets the gist. 

It's all _no, don't die, you can't die_ , and it's like, well that's dumb. You were the one who shot me. What did you think would happen? 

Steve almost laughs, but it is hot liquid in his lungs. He feels like his blood is thinner. Maybe it's because they're so high in the air, or maybe it's because he's being left with so little of it. 

He's trying to listen to the guy with the hands that are touching him, holding him together – but it is kinda hard when part of him just wants to die to spite him for being so indecisive. Shoot a guy then beg him not to die. Who does that? Some kinda idiot probably. 

'You're a jerk,' Steve manages to cough out, gurgly and nonsensical at the guy who is Bucky, and also not Bucky, who only tries to hold him together more resolutely. 

Well he _is_ a jerk. Shot him, didn't he? God, it's bright. 

A long time passes. Steve remembers a long time passing. It's hard to say how long because he's probably not conscious for all of it, but eventually there are other people there, and they're making snide comments about him and Steve wants to tell them to shut up. 

The other guy (Bucky/Not-Bucky) does it for him, and everyone goes silent. That's when words start to become clear, and Steve can remember them, at least for a while. He remembers little else for this bit. 

'What did you just say, Asset?'

'Is the Captain still breathing or no?'

'Yeah, see, he's moving a bit.'

'Not for long.'

_'Don't touch him!'_

'… Step away from him, soldier.'

'We should put him down, Sir. We should put them both down.'

'Soon enough.'

'Sir, the Asset is armed.'

'Yes, I see that. Put down the weapon.'

'Put it _down_.'

'Stay away from him!'

'Soldier, stand down.'

_'N- no. Don't touch him.'_

'Sir, we can't guarantee that the Asset is not a threat right now, I suggest--'

'This man, soldier. Do you know him?'

_'Yes.'_

'You have served us well, you are only disrespecting the work you have done in creating this new world by pointing that gun at me.'

_'I have to protect him.'_

'And you can,' Peirce says, bright and clear. 'As I say, you have done good work. It is about time you earned a reward.'

Steve closes his eyes then, trying to hold the world together, because its breaking apart into shards and soft, crumbling bits. He feels Bucky's body curled over him like protective armor. 

He sleeps.


End file.
